Reed Ferguson 1-3

by Renee Pawlish

  Henri shook his head in despair – his pupil was not getting it. I stood back and watched the show.

  “It is part of history, part of our culture, yes? So many films have influenced our lives, and the actors did, too. Films gave people a way of escape during the Great Depression. Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, they made people laugh; John Wayne defined the macho male. Mae West, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis charmed men, and helped establish fashion trends, just like the actors of today do. Many of those actors helped the war effort during the ’40’s. Look at Mickey Mouse and the whole Disney phenomena, how that mouse became a part of our culture. The list is endless. These posters are a part of our past, just like the costumes, the props, and all the other stuff, as you call it.”

  Cal’s face was blank. If it wasn’t about computers, he probably wasn’t interested. I, on the other hand, I could appreciate. I was practically drooling with every word Henri said.

  “But even if you pay ten thousand for something,” Cal said, “you’d have to buy an awful lot of posters to hit the million mark.”

  “Ah, but it isn’t just posters. It's autographs, props, clothing worn by the actors. And the rarer something is, the more valuable it becomes. In the early days of film, many studios produced their own posters, as well as window and lobby cards, for their movies, then distributed these with the films. The same posters and cards would be reused from theater to theater, leaving the posters worn. Because of that, many films do not have associated posters or cards anymore.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cal said. “I remember seeing something on TV about a house in the Midwest. The owners were renovating and they tore down some walls, and a bunch of posters had been used in the walls as insulation.”

  “I remember hearing about that,” I said.

  “Ah, yes,” Henri smiled. “I believe they found a lobby card from a Bette Davis movie, the only one in existence. How do you put a price on that?”

  Cal shrugged, but he was interested.

  “That’s a fun story, yes? But it shows you how a rare item can become worth so much. There have been more than a few cases of people finding posters in their walls, or in old frames. The Bette Davis lobby card was produced in the thirties, when the studios still produced the cards. After 1940, the National Screen Service was formed, taking on the responsibility of numbering posters, and creating more quantities for theaters. Which is why a pre-1940 poster is usually a much rarer find.”

  “Too bad my poster wasn’t made before then,” I said.

  “If it is an original,” Henri said.

  Cal’s eyes widened. “If it looks old, why wouldn’t it be an original?”

  “Ah, there are many forgers who are crafty about making a poster appear old, much like an original.”

  “And they do that because collecting is big business,” Cal said to Henri, who beamed. His student was catching on.

  “Don’t Academy Awards sell for a lot?” I asked.

  “Ah, the Oscar,” Henri said with a thoughtful nod. “This is true. Technically the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has the right to buy an Oscar back, but they are auctioned off anyway. Steven Spielberg has bought two Oscars at auction. He paid over $500,000 for Clark Gable’s Oscar for It Happened One Night, and more than that for Bette Davis’ Oscar from Jezebel, and then he returned them both to the Academy. But many private collectors own Oscars. Did you know Michael Jackson bought producer David O. Selznick’s Best Picture Oscar for Gone with the Wind?” Cal shook his head, but I nodded assent. This was all right up my alley. “An Oscar is a prized piece for a collector,” Henri finished.

  “But expensive,” I said.

  “And now you know why millions can be spent on a collection,” Henri said to Cal. “There was one collector I met when I had a shop in New York, Frank Gray, who had a beautiful collection of memorabilia. He spent years amassing all kinds of items. He owned at least a couple of Oscar statuettes. Now, he had bought his items years ago, when the prices weren’t as high, and people were not collecting like they are now. And Frank was rumored to have a very exceptional piece.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You’ve heard of Barry Fitzgerald? The actor?”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “He won a Best Supporting Oscar for Going My Way in 1944.”

  “Right, but do you know why that Oscar was unique?”

  “Barry beheaded it while playing golf in his house.”

  “Correct.”

  “How could you damage an Oscar like that?” Cal asked. “Aren’t they made of metal?”

  Henri launched into a description of wartime Oscars. “Because of the need for precious metals during World War II, the statuettes during that time were made of plaster.”

  “And after the war, Oscar winners turned the plaster ones in and got the traditional bronze with gold-plate replacements,” I said.

  Henri’s smile got even brighter at my knowledge of Oscar trivia.

  “But since Barry had damaged his plaster one, the Academy issued a replacement for it,” I continued. “Then after the war, he turned in the plaster statuette and got a gold one.”

  “And what happened to the beheaded statuette?” Henri asked.

  “I assume it was destroyed,” I said.

  He smiled. “And that’s where the rumors start, eh?”

  I waited for him to continue. Cal was hooked. He was staring intently at Henri.

  “For many years, people heard that Barry Fitzgerald’s original Oscar, the beheaded one, was not destroyed, but kept by a member of the Academy. Over time it was lost but Frank was rumored to have found it in an antique store in Hollywood.”

  “Something that rare and unique must be worth a fortune,” Cal said.

  Henri nodded. “If the rumor were true, then yes.”

  “It’s not true?” Cal and I both asked at once.

  Henri smiled. “The award may not have been destroyed, that I cannot say. But I can say for certain that Frank owned only a replica of the beheaded Oscar, not the original headless statuette.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me himself how his wife had hired an artist to make a headless statuette for him as a joke. However, the artist made one small mistake in replicating the statue.”

  “What mistake?”

  Henri smiled. “Oscar statues stand on a movie reel. But the artist intentionally changed the design of the reel.” Henri looked at me and winked. “You would know the difference. But it still gave Frank a lot of pleasure to have the replica in his collection.”

  The chimes above the door rang. We looked up as a heavyset woman entered the store.

  “Ah, it is fun to digress, but now it is time to work.” Henri stripped off his glasses and bowed his head slightly. “Reed, I will analyze your poster soon, and we shall see if it is indeed more than “stuff”.”

  Cal smiled at the joke. “I’m sure Reed hopes it’s an original.”

  “Absolutely,” I said, grinning. “I’ll take a look at these.” I held up Henri’s notes.

  “Good,” Henri said, leaving us to help his customer.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “How ya feeling?” Cal asked me.

  It was later in the evening, and Cal was sitting at a small mahogany desk in my home office, my favorite place in the condo. I am an incurable collector, and I love to work in the office surrounded by all the collections I have painstakingly acquired. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on one wall hold some of my favorite books, mostly murder mysteries, some great pictures from a memorable trip to Europe, and a collection of rare first-edition detective novels. A storage case is filled with my favorite detective movies, along with a collection of Alfred Hitchcock classics. But the thing I like best about the room is the glass display case in the corner of the room that has a first edition of A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Alfred Conan Doyle.

  I was stretched out on a brown leather loveseat, which was a new addition to the room.

  “I’m fine,
” I said as I stared up at the ceiling. “Just tired.”

  As the sun set, a weak purple light filtered through the window, and the room became a series of dim shadows. My eyelids began to sag as I struggled to stay awake.

  “This shouldn’t take too long,” Cal said.

  I squinted at him. Brilliant white light from the computer monitor made his 5 o’clock shadow seem eerie, as if his jaw was covered in silt, but he was more at ease in front of the computer than he’d been all day helping me run errands.

  We had stopped at a barber and I endured the stares while a young woman barely out of her teens evened out my hair around the stitches. She cropped my hair on the sides and left a dollop of curly hair on top. I looked like a Marine. I couldn’t wait for next week, when I would get the stitches out – at least people would stop looking at my head. Cal had ribbed me relentlessly about my haircut as we stopped by my office to check messages and get the mail. Finally, at close to six, I was able to pick up the 4-Runner. The manager of the shop was close friends with Bob Smith, so the shop fixed the car in record time.

  Throughout the day, Cal had been doing such a good job of mingling amongst the human race that I didn’t hear a complaint from him until we arrived back at my condo. A tenacious elderly lady whose car was blocking my street finally sent him over the edge. He honked the horn loudly at her, then glared in her direction as she finally maneuvered her car on down the street.

  Safely back in my condo, we had ordered a pizza, and after devouring it, we’d begun the research on Samantha Healy. To be accurate, Cal was researching. I hadn’t lifted a finger, and I didn’t intend to. I wanted to sleep. But Cal couldn’t keep away from the computer, settling comfortably back into his virtual world.

  I closed my eyes, checking my eyelids for holes. None so far.

  “Ah-ha!”

  “What?” I turned on my side and faced the desk, tucking my arms under my head.

  “I found Samantha’s acting class.”

  “Duh. I gave you the name of the school and the class. It couldn’t have been that hard.”

  Cal threw a pencil at me. “Denver Alternative College. A good place to know when you’re on the go.”

  “What’s that, their slogan?”

  “You got it. Man, this is like the community college’s community college. Where the nobodies go.” Cal’s bad one-liners continued as the mouse clicked.

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “I’m just kidding. Let’s see,” he mumbled to himself. “Acting classes, here we go.” Click.

  “So are these acting classes for the off-off-off-off Broadway actors?”

  Cal chuckled. “The class Samantha was enrolled in finished at the end of June, but there’s another class going on now with the same instructor. She might be able to verify Samantha’s alibi.”

  “Uh-huh.” I didn’t have the energy to move.

  “And lucky you, the class meets tomorrow night.”

  I shut my eyes.

  “Let me write this down for you.” Papers shuffling. “What’s this?”

  I cracked one eye open. Cal was peering at a notepad on the table. “Doing some research on the Internet? Taking my job away?”

  I tilted my head up. “That was Ned Healy’s. I used it when I went to his house. Those must be his notes.”

  “The great detective misses nothing,” Cal said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

  “Yeah, how his client was able to use the Internet.” I yawned and closed my eyes. Cal’s laughter sounded like it was filtered through a tunnel, and I was vaguely aware of him leaving the room before I fell asleep.

  *****

  The next morning, I noticed that the soreness was ebbing slightly. That, combined with having my car back from the mechanic’s rather than relying on Cal, had me in a jubilant mood. Cal was my best friend, but a little of him went a long way.

  The smell of cheap Mexican food and wet wood assaulted me as I walked into Denver Alternative College, a two-story cinder-block building on East Colfax Avenue, a mile down the road from the gold-domed State Capitol. Yellow brick walls down the main entryway made me feel like I was walking through a tunnel painted honey gold. A few students roamed the halls. Most were dressed in business casual, presumably because they’d just come from their day jobs and were now ready to improve themselves through night classes.

  I glanced at the notepad with the course information that Cal had written down last night. “The Art of Acting” was being held in room 103-A at seven o’clock. I was a half-hour early, and I hoped to find the instructor before the students arrived.

  I made my way past a bulletin board covered in a kaleidoscope of papers and post-it notes advertising everything from job openings to party announcements. At the end of the hall, I descended six stairs down to a lower level, and, at the end of a short corridor, found 103-A.

  I peeked through a thin rectangle window into an auditorium classroom with a large stage and ten rows of wooden chairs perched on an easy slope toward the back of the room. The auditorium was empty.

  I eased the door open and slipped in, letting my eyes adjust to soft lighting coming from somewhere offstage. The rest of the room remained in deep shadows.

  I was about to walk down an aisle on the left when the door opened behind me. I heard a loud click and bright lights immediately illuminated the room. I turned to see a shriveled woman in baggy turquoise pants, a flowing cream-colored silk shirt, stiletto heels a hideous shade of aqua, and an embarrassing amount of makeup.

  “May I help you?” she asked, her voice like an electric razor.

  “I’m looking for Xania Diviny,” I said, pronouncing the name “Zania”. I stared at her eyelashes, which seemed as long as my pinky fingers.

  “Ex-ZAY-nee-ah.” She corrected. She held up a wrinkled and age-spotted hand, palm down, as if she wanted me to bow and kiss it. “Di-VIN-i-tee.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s Divinity. Xania Divinity.” That’s what I get for relying on Cal’s scribbled notes. “What can I do for you?”

  I took her hand and shook it, giving her my best smile. She ran her eyes over me, then let her hand drop disappointedly to her side.

  “You don’t look like an actor. You have poor posture, your eyes are too hard, your haircut is hideous, and your smile is nothing short of goofy.” So much for my charm. “I couldn’t possibly work with so little.”

  “That’s good,” I said, “since I’m not interested in acting classes.”

  “Oh?” She took a step back, hand now on her chest, still surveying me. “I’m glad you see the futility of this.”

  I stepped back too, leaning on the back of the wooden theater seats.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about a student of yours.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Samantha Healy.”

  “What do you want to know about her?”

  I pulled out a business card from my wallet and handed it to her. Xania jerked as if I’d struck her. She now put her hand to her throat in what I could only guess was intended as a melodramatic pose, but the numerous silver and turquoise bracelets dangling from her wrist robbed the gesture of any real meaning.

  “You’re a detective, Mr. – ” She glanced at the card. “Mr.…Reed.” I guess Ferguson was too hard to read, or pronounce. “Is Samantha in some kind of trouble?”

  “Samantha said she was in your class, Actors and Acting, last semester,” I said, ignoring the question.

  “Yes, that’s true. She has been a student of mine for a few years.”

  “I noticed that the school catalog shows the class is three hours long.”

  Xania pursed her lips, then sucked a breath in through a slit and let it slowly out. “When you have so little to work with, you need a lot of time.”

  “Samantha isn’t a good actress?”

  “Most of my students have a lot of learning to do. That’s why they’re here. Samantha makes progress, but it will be some time b
efore she will be cast in the student audition play.”

  “The what?”

  “The student audition play.” Xania frowned at me, and her rouge cracked into tiny red wrinkle lines. “At the end of each semester, our more experienced students audition for roles in a play that we perform in front of the rest of the theater students. It gives the best of our actors a chance to refine their skills, and we invite local theater directors to the plays. This way the actors get exposure and the directors get a chance to informally audition new talent.”

  I feigned interest. “That sounds terrific.”

  “We have had great success with this. In all my years of instructing, I have had many pupils go on to great careers. You’ve heard of John Sayers?” I shook my head. “Anna Fredricks?” I shook my head again. “Darren Joyden?” I didn’t bother this time. I figured the blank look on my face would be enough.

  Xania clucked at my ignorance. “These actors were nothing, but I molded them so they were able to go on to grand things.” Like what – billboards, underwear ads in the local papers, commercials on late-night cable?

  “But Samantha isn’t one of those,” I said.

  “If she keeps working with me, her acting will improve.”

  “Samantha said she was here on June 6th.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked, surprised that anyone could remember a seemingly random date pulled out of the air.

  “We performed the student audition play for last semester that night.” Xania put a gnarled hand on my elbow and guided me to a series of posters scotch-taped to the back wall. She pointed to a red poster with black letters, advertising the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  “Shakespeare,” I said.

  “We must all bow to the Bard if we want to ascend to greatness,” Xania spoke with reverence.

  Under the title was a list of actors, and then the line “One night only!” The date for the performance was June 6th, at 7:00 in the evening.

  “But Samantha’s name isn’t here,” I said. “Was she in some minor role?”

  “She was not in the play, Reed,” she said, her friendliness making me uncomfortable. “She is not at the level of these actors.”