“You do it for the viewers?” asked Jane.
“Oh no. Hell no. We do it for each other. If you can make another writer in the room laugh, you’ve succeeded. All the rest of them who work on the show? The ones who take all the credit when the awards are handed out? They don’t know anything. It’s the other writers you work for…they know when the writing’s good,” said Louise.
“If that’s the case, what if Heck made a movie that he wasn’t proud of? That he didn’t think you all would like? Would he keep it a secret?”
“What?” said Louise. “What kind of movie would that be?”
Jane hesitated for a moment. If she was wrong about this, it was a lousy thing to say about someone who had jumped to his death. “Maybe it was something off-color or even—”
“Porn?” Louise laughed. “You think Heck got into porno? He couldn’t even say—”
“But he wrote those parodies. You told me they were filthy and that he—” Jane’s phone rang inside of her bag, and she began digging. Without Nick to change the ring for her, she recognized the no-nonsense bell right away. She had been so busy, so wrapped up in her Hollywood case, she hadn’t even missed Nick and Charley, but when the phone rang, she felt their absence like a hard blow to the chest. She had to finish all of this and go back to Illinois so she could miss them properly. They were due home in another week. She’d be there to welcome them. By the time she found the phone and flipped it open, it had stopped ringing, but the message light flashed.
“Interesting bit of information from Bobbette. No letter opener, though. Jeb has got some cool old religious stuff. Fits in with his cult leader image. I’ll try Oh. Call when you get the chance. Don’t buy any Roseville. The market is flooded with copies.”
Louise had dried her eyes with a charming vintage handkerchief, Jane had noted, and seemed hesitant to start the car. She was probably uncertain of whether, after all this serious discussion, they were still shopping. Jane realized that she wasn’t ready to end the conversation, not just because she needed information to put this whole puzzle together, but because she liked Louise. Louise had a good eye for stuff and, Jane was beginning to believe, a good heart. On the other hand, Jane wasn’t so sure about her judgment when it came to Louise’s friends.
“Louise, just hear me out on this. Suppose Heck did make an X-rated movie under a different name. Maybe he liked doing it, but had to keep it a secret because you all wouldn’t like it. Jeb told me that you all workshop your writing together and Jeb edits and takes a cut of your money—maybe Jeb wouldn’t want to take a cut of that money. Maybe he’d be worried about the B Room reputation. Maybe all that contributed to Heck’s breakdown. Maybe he was keeping secrets from you all.”
“And that was why he stopped going out and he hid in the house and stopped wanting to see all of us….” said Louise.
“Let’s say Patrick, his cousin, came over and gave him some song and dance about blood being thicker than water and Heck confessed what he had done to Patrick. Maybe Cousin Patrick was blackmailing him, and whoever killed Patrick did it to avenge Heck,” said Jane, aware of the holes in this, but wanting to see what Louise came up with.
“Lou wouldn’t have cared about Heck. I mean, not enough to murder Patrick. Besides, Patrick was pretty scary himself—paranoid and thought everyone was stealing from him. Lou told us that Patrick once accused him of stealing the ideas right out of his head.”
“Forget Lou as Patrick’s murderer for a minute. Let’s just say it could have been someone else. Anyone who was at that flea market, for example…Wait a minute,” said Jane. “Did Heck and Patrick ever write anything together? Because if they did and someone took it from Heck, thinking he was so crazy he either wouldn’t know it was missing or no one would believe him that someone was stealing from him…” Jane said, remembering that the manuscript she had seen Rick and Greg working on had H. Rule typed across the top.
Jane looked at Louise and saw that she was losing her on this. Jane herself wasn’t sure exactly how this would work, but now that she had the idea in her head it wouldn’t go away. Fueled by her reading of Patrick’s vanity novel, Jane grew more and more certain that Heck and Patrick had come up with some idea, some story that was stolen. And it was probably stolen by someone who didn’t know Patrick was involved, someone who felt safe in taking material from Heck. Louise said that Patrick was over at Heck’s house all the time. Maybe Heck was churning out material that Patrick helped with, or maybe it was all Heck’s and Patrick wanted to take credit himself. Jane looked at Louise, who had her hands on the steering wheel, ready for Jane to tell her where they were going, what they were doing with all of this.
“Louise, will you take me to Lou and Bix’s office on the lot?”
“Bix wasn’t planning on going in today,” said Louise. “She and Jeb were—”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Jane. “I have a key.”
19
The amateur borrows, the professional steals.
—FROM Hollywood Diary BY BELINDA ST. GERMAINE
Louise remained quiet on the way to Bix’s office. Jane had offered up a lot of information, admittedly much of it speculation, but the more Jane thought about Heck and his relationship to Patrick, the more Jane was convinced that something Heck had done, or had been in the process of doing, had set all of this in motion. Patrick discovered that his cousin had a secret and somehow was using it to blackmail someone or some two from the B Room.
As they approached the main entrance to the studio lot, Louise flipped on her turn signal. She was about to drive into the public parking lot across the street that accommodated visitors to the studio when Jane suggested Louise drive past and turn at the next street.
“The private lot,” said Louise.
“You’re not surprised?” asked Jane.
“I’m guessing that you came this way with Jeb. He said you were with him when he heard about Bix. We’re going to have to walk back around, though. I’m not even sure how we’ll get in the main gate if Bix’s assistant isn’t there to okay us. Who do I still know there? I guess I could call Gary in props or somebody on the set of—”
“No need, Louise. I really do have a key,” said Jane.
When they got out of the car, Jane looked around and saw no one near any of the cars parked in the annex. She motioned for Louise to follow her and walked to the gate. She unlocked it and gave an open-handed voilà gesture, pointing toward the back door of Bix Pix Flix.
“When we went to the W to pack up your stuff, Jeb told me to keep an eye out for a small old key. He said something about it being an old joke between the two of you in college and he wanted to see if you still had it. Said you’d think it was hysterical if he ended up presenting it to you instead of vice versa.”
“Jeb has not lost a step when it comes to improvisation,” said Jane. “Truth is I stole it the first day I was here. Jeb must have noticed it missing after I was here with him. I just had a feeling I was going to need it.”
“You really are a detective, aren’t you?” said Louise. “Or a thief.”
Jane knocked on the back door, but there was no answer. It was open, as it had been the last time when she and Tim paid an unannounced visit. The two women stepped in and Jane scanned the hall. She peered into Bix’s office. The day, which had begun so brightly, had turned overcast. Bix’s office, with the shades partially drawn, was dark and empty. Jane couldn’t put her finger on what was different, but she had a feeling someone had been in the place since she had been there. She scanned the shelves and Bix’s desk. Some folders that were there before now missing? A coffee cup cleared away? That was it. There had been a pink GlassBake square coffee cup on the desk when Jane and Jeb had rushed over from their lunch after Bix got hurt. Tim had been on the phone and pointed to it when Jane walked in because he knew Jane collected them and was trying to complete a set. An assistant could have cleared it. Lou and Bix could have stopped in on their way back from the hospital. Lou’s office door was
closed. Had it been closed when she and Tim had checked it out?
“What are you looking for?” asked Louise.
Jane didn’t answer right away. Her first response was the same as it would have been if someone asked her what she was looking for when she went to a flea market. She wouldn’t know until she found it. But that wasn’t true here. At Bix Pix Flix, Jane did have an idea of what she might find.
“Louise, I swear I just want to keep all of you safe. Can I trust you to keep an eye on the door, warn me if you see anyone coming, while I look for something in Lou’s office?”
Louise swallowed hard and nodded.
Jane gave the door a gentle push and stepped in. Her own house had been burglarized once. The garage, where she stored all of her finds to send out to the dealers for whom she picked, had been turned upside down. Boxes were emptied, file drawers where she stored receipts and photos of objects on her search list, every book, pot, plate, vase that she kept in the old bookcases that snaked around the space where a car should be parked had been thrown onto the concrete floor, smashed and shattered. Jane hadn’t seen the worst of it—Charley had been there when it happened and managed to clean away most of the heartbreaking mess before she returned from Kankakee.
Jane wondered who would take care of this for Lou.
Every file drawer from the two cabinets behind his desk was emptied onto the floor. His desk drawers were empty, thrown onto the floor, with their contents spread all over the carpet. Cardboard file boxes of manuscripts that he had stored in the closet had been turned over on their sides, pages flung everywhere. The file cabinet nearest to the door, on Jane’s immediate left, was ransacked but not totally emptied. Jane had a sense that whoever had done this had begun at that file, hoping to find what he or she was looking for by a methodical
sweep of the room. One could read the frustration of the seeker by how much more destructive the search became as it moved around the room. The person who stormed the office wasn’t interested in any personal objects belonging to Lou Piccolo. His collections of paperweights, letter openers, and Depression glass remained untouched. Neither, apparently, was anyone interested in Lou’s own recent work, since a laptop computer sat on a side table unmolested.
Jane saw no reason to stay and look further, since someone had already done a more than thorough job.The angry mess persuaded her that the search had been unsuccessful. Giving the room one last look, she noticed one thing about which she had been mistaken. She at first thought that Lou’s collections had remained untouched. That was incorrect. On his desk, the rows of paperweights remained intact. The row of letter openers, however, had been tampered with since Jane had been there before. The hand-hammered silver letter opener whose outline on the dusty desktop had made its absence obvious was no longer missing. Whoever had taken it, probably in order to frame Lou Piccolo, had decided it was no longer necessary. The letter opener had been returned.
Jane returned to the front of the bungalow, where Louise, true to her word, was looking out the front window. Jane scanned the shelves of first editions in the glass-covered barrister bookcases. Everything she could remember seemed to be there. No obvious gaps in the rows of books. The shelves lined with glass shakers, some with cuttings of ivy and philodendron, remained unscathed. Only Lou’s office had been ransacked. And whoever had done it was looking for something that could be filed away, placed in a desk drawer. Scripts? Rewrites? Treatments? Polishes? All of the work Patrick’s narrator claimed he gave to Sam Sagella for distribution to the other writers in his novel, the members of the D Room?
Jane had purposely left the gate ajar when she and Louise sneaked onto the lot. If they were caught, she wanted to be able to say they stumbled upon the entrance by accident and wandered in to explore. If there had been anything in Lou’s office before, and Jane doubted there was, certainly there was nothing left now. Jane motioned to Louise that it was time to leave. She took the small key out of her pocket and dropped it back where she had found it the day of her meeting with Bix. She wouldn’t need it again.
Jane latched the gate and clicked the lock closed. The two women got into the Prius and Louise pulled to the annex parking lot exit and spoke for the first time since they had left Bix Pix Flix.
“Where to?” she asked, awaiting instructions before she turned onto the street.
“Heck’s house,” said Jane.
Tim was surprised that Jane had not yet returned his call. He had told her it was nothing urgent, but on the other hand, didn’t he say he had interesting news? What did a sidekick have to do around here to get some attention?
He and Bobbette had a fine time making the dough for the croissants and while it was resting, Bobbette brought up the subject of the dirty glasses they had found on the top pantry shelf.
“I scolded Mr. Jeb about it today and he acted all Mr. Innocence about it. I will tell you, a man can fool his wife, lie to his lover, and steal from his boss, but he can’t fool his housekeeper,” said Bobbette.
“What’s his secret?” Tim asked, hoping he sounded nonchalant.
“He is smoking cigarettes again. He quit them six months ago for the fourth time. Every time he gets divorced or something goes bad with his work, he starts smoking, then he has to quit all over again. What is it about men that they are so weak?”
Tim shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, smiling at her. “I have no vices.”
“Sure, I’ll just bet that’s true,” said Bobbette. “Anyway, I said to him that I had the proof, and he said I must be drinking the cooking wine and I told him that wasn’t funny. I would prove it that I could prove it.”
Bobbette told Tim that she demanded Jeb follow her to the pantry, where she had left the glasses out in plain sight.
“After you went back to the guesthouse last night, I went to get them to wash. I couldn’t figure out what was in them. I smelled them and they were horrible. All tobacco in some drink of gin or vodka. I knew right away what had happened. Mr. Jeb sneaked into the pantry with his drink and smoked, then, when he heard me coming, put out the cigarette in his glass. He knows he can’t let me see it, so he sticks it up high in the pantry where he thinks I can’t see or reach it. I decided not to wash it. I would show him he can’t hide from me. But when we came into the pantry this morning, the glasses were gone. No dirty glasses nowhere,” said Bobbette. “Mr. Jeb made the cuckoo crazy sign with his finger to his head and went back to his office to work. I looked all over the kitchen.” Bobbette wiped her hands on a dish towel, then folded it by the sink. “Hey, did you come back in and wash them for me?”
“Nope,” said Tim. “That’s some mystery, huh?” He couldn’t wait to tell Jane and Oh that Jeb Gleason had mixed a nicotine cocktail in his pantry.
“Maybe it was those girls. They are always in my kitchen.”
“What girls?”
“Those writer women. They always come in and say they want to help. They dry one dish, then wander away when they think of the joke they were trying to write. Ms. Skye is the one who always offers to help first. She tries. She just never learned how to do anything. Ms. Bix and Ms. Louise come in after and help her help me, but then they all get called to help some more in the office meetings. Why do people think that housekeepers want help? Tw o things we want? To be left alone to do our work and to not be friends with the people who pay us.”
Tim nodded. Now that he knew Bobbette didn’t want to be friends, he didn’t have to finish making the croissants, did he? He needed to talk to Jane and tell Oh that he found the poison and the poisoner. Except that the poison itself was now gone and the poisoner had been tipped off that his poison had been found.
“Bobbette,” said Tim,” did you mention that I was with you when you found those glasses?”
“I don’t think so,” said Bobbette. “I wouldn’t want to mention that you were helping. You—you do okay in the kitchen, not like those women. And it was fun with you. But I’m not sure Mr. Jeb would like that I let you work with me. Cookin
g’s another story—everybody wants to cook with me so they can steal my recipes.”
Tim and Bobbette stopped talking when they heard the doorbell ring. It was a loud dramatic chord. Since he and Jane arrived yesterday, Tim realized that the house had been full of people who came and went at will. Had he heard a doorbell ring? This was a kind of Hollywood fraternity or sorority house with a bunch of sisters and brothers who all had the key and permanent access.
Bobbette wiped her hands and headed for the door. Tim went into the pantry and took a quick sweep of the cupboards. The housekeeper was right. No dirty glasses. There was a row of Waterford tumblers on the top shelf. Tim counted twelve. The two that had been used to dissolve the cigarettes or chewing tobacco or whatever had been used had been emptied, washed, and put away. As Tim called Jane and left a message on her voice mail about what he’d discovered, he absentmindedly pulled open the drawers. Maybe there was something else—a tin of chewing tobacco or some pretentious French cigarettes that belonged to Gleason or something he could offer Jane and Oh in order to tie the creepy old boyfriend to Lou Piccolo’s death.
“Hello?” Tim said in his best James Bond–speak. The drawer he had opened had random bar accessories and kitchen utensils. Two tarnished sterling silver individual lemon squeezers which he would love to pocket to add to his collection of beautifully rendered, yet truly gratuitous dining objects, but he resisted temptation. The object he instead lifted out of the drawer, using a linen towel to pluck it from among the other items, was a four-or five-inch plunger and tube device, almost an inch in diameter. If one were prone to doctor’s office nightmares, this would be the instrument with which the evil nurse would approach to give you a flu shot. It was a syringe-type in-fuser, fitted with a sharp point, originally intended to infuse meats and poultry with a marinade. Now it was half filled with a viscous brownish goo, dried onto the sides of the tube.
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