“Excellent, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh. “I’ll call the detective I spoke with last night and let him know what to pass along to the medical examiner.”
“ We still don’t know for sure,” said Tim. “And if someone did poison Lou, does that mean Lou didn’t kill Patrick?”
“It doesn’t mean that necessarily, but it always seemed pretty obvious to me that a letter opener was missing from Lou’s office, identical to the one found in Patrick Dryer’s back,” said Jane. “Lou claimed he was a hack writer and Patrick claimed Lou was a thief, but even the world’s worst Hollywood writer would create a better scenario than that. In fact, it makes a lot more sense that someone else would take the letter opener from Lou’s desk in order to frame him.”
“Remember there was a letter opener sold that day at the flea market? The one in Patrick had a tag on it, didn’t it?” asked Tim.
Jane reminded Tim how easy it would be to get a tag off any of the things they had purchased and tie it onto Lou’s letter opener. The B Room went to the flea markets every weekend. They were all shoppers and collectors.
“Besides,” said Jane,” maybe the murder weapon really was the letter opener purchased that day at the market. Maybe Patrick’s murder was spontaneous. Someone saw him there, he told them about the book being published, that person had just bought a beautiful silver letter opener, and lo and behold, the perfect opportunity for its use presented itself. Then,” Jane continued, “either the murderer or someone who wanted to protect the murderer took the opener from Lou’s desk to make it look like it was Piccolo who finally got rid of his ghost and tormentor.”
“And the guy who had been doing all the writing for everyone,” said Tim. “Pretty screwy to kill the goose who was providing the golden eggs.”
Oh carefully replaced the cigars in the case, then peeled off his gloves and tossed them in the trash. Jane shrugged. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Jane looked at the kitchen clock. Oh was going to have to leave for the hospital to be on time to meet Claire. Tim had scheduled a cooking lesson with Bobbette. Jane needed to get dressed and wrap this case up. She grinned to herself. She loved thinking in detective-speak.
18
The “leave-behind,” the material you leave for the network executive who has listened to your pitch, should be brief. It has to be catchy, memorable, to the point. Brief is the key. They’ll be upset if you leave them more than one page to throw away.
—FROM Hollywood Diary BY BELINDA ST. GERMAINE
Jeb Gleason had suggested that someone other than himself show Jane and Tim around L.A. He would be tied up all day.
Wren Bixby had suggested another meeting to discuss the possibility of The Scarecrow Murder. Even though Jane was there as a detective, her story still had movie possibilities.
Skye suggested a massage. Everyone had been through so much, was so stressed out. She thought Ernie could work Jane into his schedule…before or after her own appointment.
Greg and Rick suggested they be left completely alone to finish their current script. Completely alone.
Louise Dietz offered to take Jane shopping.
Jane blew a farewell kiss to Tim, who was wearing an apron identical to Bobbette’s and was listening to her lecture on making the perfect croissant. Jane sat outside, watching for Louise to wind her way down the driveway. She thought it would be better if they just took off and Louise didn’t get a chance to receive her daily instructions from Jeb. Not that he wouldn’t have already called her and told her where to take me, what to tell me. Ah well, fair is fair. Jane had given Tim his instructions, too. As soon as Jeb left the house, Tim was to search through every nook and cranny, paying particular attention to the desk drawers in the study to see if he could find an early 1900s arts and crafts silver letter opener. Jane knew that Jeb had been in Lou’s office. He had gone in there to make calls when they hurried back from lunch. When Jane returned later to look around, a letter opener was missing from Lou’s desk. It was possible that Cynda or whoever had taken it or moved it, but unlikely. The assistants waltzed in and out of the office, waiting for their own careers to begin. They hadn’t seemed particularly invested in any dramas that were playing out within Bix Pix Flix.
Jeb had taken the scalpel from the hosptial, he said, because he feared Lou might be coming after him next after Patrick. Highly unlikely that he really believed that, or that he thought he would be effectively arming himself with the tiny blade. Maybe he just likes shiny sharp objects.
Louise drove her Prius around the circle drive and stopped it directly in front of Jane. She was wearing well-tailored charcoal gray slacks, a soft cotton, blue button-down shirt, and comfortable low-heeled shoes. Shopping clothes. Her hair was pulled back from her face and she smiled at Jane with the most carefree attitude Jane had seen from any of the B Room since her arrival. Either Louise was the best actress of them all, or she really believed that with Patrick and Lou gone, the trouble was behind them. Despite her cheerful mood and positive attitude, her greeting was serious business.
“Memorial service for Lou is set for Friday,” she said, gesturing to the cell phone that lay on the car seat. “I just got a call from his sister. She’s the only family member coming for it.”
Jane wondered if the medical examiner would be releasing Lou’s body by then. No matter, really, if they were just setting up a friends-and-family memorial. On the other hand, Jane found herself struggling not to mention the possibility that Lou Piccolo had been murdered. Would that affect the eulogy? The eulogizers?
“Was this left up to you to arrange?” asked Jane. “I would have thought Bix—”
“Yeah, Bix is taking care of the details. Place. Food. Format. She just asked if I could make a few calls. Lou’s sister said that high cholesterol and high blood pressure run in the Piccolo family, although she didn’t know Lou had it. I heard about fifteen minutes of her health history before I got another call that saved me.”
Jane would bet the other call was from Jeb. She wasn’t ready to trust all of her hunches, but there was something so intimate and immediate in the way Louise looked up at the second-floor window of the house when she was turning the car out of the driveway. As if it were the real ending to a conversation. Jane followed Louise’s eyes and saw Jeb, in his royal robe, standing in the window watching them leave. She wondered where he had told Louise to take her.
“How about Long Beach?” asked Louise. “It’s a beautiful day for a drive and I know some great little places.”
“Actually, I was thinking I’d really like to concentrate on the area around here. You know, since I’m here and toying with showbiz, I’d like to stay close to the heart of the action. I read about some vintage clothing stores, thought we might scout a little jewelry, maybe some Bakelite?” Jane did not want to end up a freeway or so away from Jeb’s. If Oh called, if Tim needed her, she wanted…what? To come to the rescue?
“Great,” said Louise. “I am always up for jewelry.”
Jane had seen the look when Louise was on the hunt in Pasadena. Jewelry was definitely one of her passions.
“Maybe we’ll do a little trip down Sunset. I’d like to hit Minna’s and you’ll like Rumor B. Then we’ll swing back this way and stop in at Ozzie Dots and Wacko. Those’ll give you a taste of what’s out here. Anything special you’re looking for?” asked Louise.
“Everything,” answered Jane. “I just won’t know it until I see it.”
That was always the truth.
Their first stop was a place on Sunset called The Way We Were. Jane loved everything about the shop, the crowded shelves, the wooden floors that made a creaky old dime-store sound when you walked on them, and the wire bins of billiard balls. What was it about round shapes, spheres, that made Jane go a little weak in the knees? Even as a child, she had loved brightly colored rubber balls—for bouncing, for playing, yes, but more for the way they looked when they were all nested into a box under her bed. Maybe Nellie was right—maybe Jane had been peculiar right from t
he get-go. The only negative about The Wa y We Were that Jane discerned was the fact that the title song would now be implanted in her head until an equally tenacious melody reared its catchy refrain.
Jane’s tell when she went into shopping/buying/lusting mode was humming. She hummed through flea markets, house sales, not so much in auctions, since the auctioneer provided such an interesting background theme, but certainly she provided her own music in antique stores and malls. Now the searing Streisand” Memories…” begged to be released in her own off-key humming. She tried to keep it low.
Jane had worked her way down one aisle of the store, finding several items to touch, but only two to keep. She caressed two sets of paper dolls. June Allyson and Cyd Charisse. They were expensive, but if she could get a discount for buying them both, it would be worth it. Both had been partially cut, but June’s folder had three intact sheets. One had dresses and two were accessories—hats, shoes, scarves, handbags—the most difficult to cut out. Jane and Tim, when they were in first grade, had played long hours of paper dolls. Tim had been a master with a scissors even at six years old. Jane knew these sets were less desirable to a collector than they would be if they had been left entirely uncut, but she didn’t care about the condition. All she knew was that if she and Tim weren’t busy crime-solving tonight, they would be arguing over who got to be June and who got to be Cyd.
Louise hadn’t moved from the first jewelry display counter. Jane appreciated her method. Louise was a side-to-side-up-down shopper. She carefully canvassed the cases before calling for help, so she made efficient use of the salesclerk’s time while not missing a single item. Jane admired the discipline. Tim called Jane’s technique “wild-eyes.” Even though she could walk down an aisle from beginning to end, Jane’s eyes darted all over the place. She was a reflexive looker—one item led her to another, and only with the greatest effort could she systematically scan a shelf.
Louise found two unsigned costume jewelry pins for a good price. She thought one might be an unsigned Chanel.
“More likely a knockoff, but a good one. See the center? Poured glass. The little stones on the sides are all prong-set. It’s nice. Good color.” She held it up to the light and turned it slightly. They both watched it cast its rainbow onto the wooden floorboards.
With the exception of Tim, Jane didn’t like shopping with other people. Often they wanted to show her everything, hold up each item they saw for her approval. Or worse, they wanted to ask her why she was looking at whatever. What is it? What would you do with it? Where would you put it? Why do you like it? It was in the middle of that type of questioning that Jane understood the impulse to murder. She had told Detective Oh that it was probably helpful careerwise that she could put herself in the mind of a killer now and then. He hadn’t seemed amused or convinced.
Louise didn’t talk or ask questions. She merely smiled at Jane in that dreamy way that said she was happy and she was happy that Jane was happy and wasn’t being lost in this stuff so happy? She was tipsy, well on her way to drunk, as was Jane. Stuff was the newest drug, the acceptable drink before five.
Jane might have forgotten all about Patrick Dryer and Lou Piccolo and lost herself in Picker Life 101 for the morning had she not turned a corner and found herself face-to-face with a six-foot-tall, faded, but still colorful wooden cigar-store Indian. His hands were carved so that they could hold a removable tray. On it, the owner of the antiques store had set several other pieces of politically incorrect kitsch. Squaw and Brave salt and pepper shakers, a small ceramic cup with an Indian chief figure attached with the words the big chief ‘s cigars hand-painted on the cup, and several old cigar boxes.
Lou Piccolo could not have sent a more striking reminder. And Jane, watching her drunk-with-love-of-stuff companion pay for her jewelry, figured she should strike while Louise seemed the most vulnerable.
“Let’s stash our stuff in the trunk. I want to take you to a great place that has an amazing collection of movie memorabilia and oh wait…are you interested in books? First editions? Because I have…” Louise began rummaging through her purse looking for a business card with the address of their next stop.
“Lou Piccolo collected first editions, right?” asked Jane.
“Yes. First editions and Depression glass. Vinyl records and, let’s see, he liked vintage telephones, too,” said Louise. “Lots of other stuff, too. I think maybe the first time I met Lou was at the flea market. Bix brought him to one of our Sundays.”
Jane knew that if you can establish the common ground of collecting…the thrill of the hunt and all…you can get someone to talk and talk. Collectors loved their stuff, but they loved their stories about how they got it even more. And everyone collected the stories.
“Lou was a good shopper. He liked to get under the tables, go through the boxes. I went to a couple of old house sales with him and he could find things squirreled away in cupboards and then make the people holding the sale feel like he had just done them the biggest favor in the world—hauling out the trash for them. Then we’d get to the car and he’d show me an old adding machine, a Victor with Bakelite handle and keys, buried at the bottom of a box of scrap paper and office supplies that the people just missed. He never really lied about what he found and wanted to buy, but he sold the idea of it as something worthless, paid a buck for an alleged box of junk, and walked out shaking his head. Lou was a good actor.”
“So Lou was a digger?”
“Exactly. Under the tables, basements, attics, under beds.”
“Was he a killer?” asked Jane.
Louise only hesitated for a second. If she was preparing to lie or talk from a B Room script, she, too, was a good actor.
“Maybe he killed Patrick. He had a temper. He and Jeb used to fight like crazy, but that was just jealousy. Territorial pawing of the ground and all that. I mean, Patrick was a pretty slimy guy, and God knows…Damn it, I should have turned there. Okay, I’ll go around the block.” Louise turned down a narrow street. “They used to shoot exteriors for Southpaw and Lefty around here. See that alley? That was where Sandy drove, like he was heading home, in the opening credits?”
“Patrick was slimy?” asked Jane.
“Yeah, he was a creep,” said Louise,” after what he…Hey, there’s a parking space.”
Jane waited until Louise had parked the car, then put her hand on Louise’s arm before she opened the car door.
“It sounds like you knew him pretty well,” Jane said.
Louise realized that she had spoken too freely about Dryer. The members of the B Room all claimed to know about Patrick, but denied actually knowing him well. Someone had claimed to have met him on the S and L set, but Jane didn’t remember Louise giving up any personal information. Now she straightened her shoulders and turned to face Jane.
“I had an encounter with Patrick once. I didn’t like him. He was a user and selfish. He didn’t even…” Louise stopped. She looked at her cell phone resting in the cup holder. Jane imagined that she longed for it to ring. If only Jeb would call and tell her what she could do to extricate herself from this conversation. Jane knew that both Jeb and Louise had thought shopping would be a safe activity. Jeb might have thought Jane was enough of a detective to calm everyone’s nerves about the threats to the B Room when he encouraged Bix to fly her in, but now that he believed the mystery was solved, he figured she was done detecting and her picker instincts would rise to the surface.
“He didn’t want to identify the body of his cousin?” asked Jane.
Louise didn’t cry. No tears formed. But Jane could tell that it was everything she could do to hold it all back.
“Yes, Patrick was Heck’s cousin. He was there that horrible night. Heck had become such a sick man and we couldn’t do anything for him. He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat. He wrote constantly, that’s what he told us. Wouldn’t show anybody anything. That creepy Patrick was there, he could have identified the body, but he refused to go in. They made me…”
; Louise lost the struggle and began to cry.
“Heck probably wasn’t the nicest guy in the world, but he was close. I mean, he had his tics, you know? But he’d do anything for his friends. Before he got sick. And Patrick kept trying to weasel his way into Heck’s life. It seemed like every time I’d call to check on Heck, Patrick would answer the phone. He was there all the time. Tried to turn Heck against all of us. Thought he’d get Heck’s stuff, but he didn’t get away with that. Heck left everything to the B Room. He made Jeb and Bix and Lou the coexecutors of the estate, but Rick and Greg and Skye and me, we’re all part of the group that gets everything.”
“Did he have a lot of money?” Jane asked.
“That’s what’s so funny. He didn’t have anything, really. Just his house and everything in it. No savings. He spent his money from Southpaw and Lefty on his own company. Tried to make movies. No one goes from television to movies easily. Shoot, writers who work on thirty-minute sitcoms can’t even move to hour-long shows without jumping through a million hoops. Heck said he was going to do it on his own. He told me he had made a movie. He’d invite us over to see his movie, then he’d say he couldn’t find it. Said someone must have stolen his only copy. Talked about it a lot, but it was after he snapped. Jeb said it was just another delusion.”
Jane knew that Oh would counsel her to keep listening. He would tell her not to ask a question that offered more information than it sought. But Jane was too excited to listen to her own warnings, even if they came from the smartest voices in her head.
“Is it possible Heck did make a movie, but didn’t really want you all to see it?” asked Jane.
“No,” said Louise. “Absolutely not. Haven’t you spent enough time with us? Every time one of says anything that’s remotely amusing, we’re repeating it to each other and making sure everyone knows it was our funny line. It’s what we do—make stuff up to make each other laugh—or cry, as the case may be. We don’t do it for the producers or the actors or the directors….”
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