by Diane Capri
At seven o’clock Judith Avidon showed her into the Squire house. The nurse gave her name only after Piper asked her for it, along with an attitude. Piper followed her into the living room, the large room at the front. The room glowed with late afternoon sunlight. She looked away from the light into the dim expanse of the room.
The expensive fifties furnishings, though faded in places from years of afternoon sunlight, looked in good condition. The various paintings and sculptures, if not genuine, were impressive reproductions. A Jackson Pollock canvas hung on the wall behind the grand piano. From what Nana had told her about Sybil’s taste, it leaned toward the eclectic. Bookshelves lined the walls on two sides. One bookcase, divided by a massive open hearth, held the dozens of figurines, the beautifully crafted replicas of European aristocrats by the nineteenth century French artist. She had looked up the Q. Letec collection and was surprised that work so fine and delicate would appeal to Sybil. Yet anyone who loved songbirds would appreciate fine beauty and grace.
Sybil sat in a black mohair wingback chair with ivory piping. Her posture was stiff, wooden, the same unnatural posture she’d displayed that day in the bank. A portable oxygen tank stood to one side of her chair, unused now. On the opposite side was a birdcage on a stand. The bright yellow canary was silent, preening himself.
“They’re beautiful,” Piper said of the figurines, hoping to open their visit with casual dialogue that would put them both at ease. Sybil remained as silent and as inanimate as the figurines lining the bookshelves. Piper cleared her throat, rubbed her hands together nervously, and moved into the room.
Sybil watched Piper approach. Sybil seemed thinner, frailer than that afternoon at the bank. Piper extended her hand. After an uncomfortable pause, Sybil raised a hand and gingerly touched Piper’s palm before placing her hand back into her lap.
“Mrs. Squire, I’ve been worried about you. I hope you don’t think I’m being too pushy. I wanted to see you. To tell you how sorry I am about the fire. I hope you’re recovering okay from the burns.”
“I am, thank you,” Sybil said in a level tone.
Piper knew, without turning, that the nurse was still within earshot. Did she intend to monitor their entire conversation?
“Mick—that’s Mick Vogt, the producer—gave me the footage today for the documentary. The one I was telling you about on film noir. The one I’ll be editing. When I get it whipped into some sort of shape, I’d like you to come over and have a look at it … to give me your opinion, your input. Would you do that?”
Sybil reached over to a table beside her chair and picked up a photograph. A black and white glossy of herself. A publicity photo from the classic thriller, A Pocketful of Lies. “Would you like me to autograph this for you?”
Piper was confused and disappointed. Instead of answering her, she offered to autograph a publicity photo, something she had given to countless fans in the past. Did she think Piper was nothing more than an overzealous fan, looking for a celebrity keepsake? Although they’d had only the one meeting, in those few minutes she thought they had shared something more intimate than fan-to-idol chitchat. Sybil had seemed interested in her work, praising her achievements, inquiring about her personal life and encouraging her to be independent. Where was that kind, caring woman now, she wondered.
Without waiting for an answer, Sybil said, “Hand me that pen, dear, the one on the table.”
Piper handed her the pen. The closest seat was the matching black couch, far away on the other side of the large oval coffee table. Piper bent down at her feet, squatting on her heels.
She signed the photograph with a shaky hand. Piper took it, thanking her.
“Do you have a smoke?” Sybil said under her breath.
Piper turned to see if the nurse was still in the room.
“She’s gone.”
Piper patted the breast pocket of her blouse. She reached inside and pulled out a slip of paper. It was the fortune from her birthday dinner. Beware of false icons. She dropped it back into her pocket. “I’m sorry, I left them at home. I’m really not a fulltime smoker. Maybe one or two in the evening, on the deck.”
“Sometimes three.”
That surprised her. Sybil had been watching her, as she watched Sybil.
“Do you have Sins of the Family?” Sybil asked.
“Sins of the Family? Well, no, but—”
Sybil cut in, “What’s your favorite?”
“Of your films?”
She nodded.
“Black Ribbon,” Piper said without hesitation. Sins of the Family was not one of Sybil’s films. Why had she mentioned it? Maybe confusion or a ploy to test the validity of her admiration as a fan?
“May I offer you something to drink?”
Piper declined; afraid she would summon one of her aides.
Sybil lifted the rock glass at her elbow, put it to her lips, and threw back the amber liquid. Then she began to rise.
Piper stood and reached for her glass. “I’ll get that for you.”
Taking the glass, Piper stepped to the bar cart on the other side of the lamp table. It wasn’t hard to figure out what she was drinking. The three bottles lined up were all scotch, the brand unfamiliar to her. She poured a shot, neat. Just the way Sybil had been drinking it. The canary twittered. Sybil twisted to the side and began rooting through a full ashtray on the end table. After snagging a butt, she carefully straightened it, lifted the crystal lighter and tried to light it. Piper took the heavy lighter from her trembling fingers, clicked it and held it out to her. Sybil leaned in, squinting one eye as the flame caught the end and flared. Ashes and sparks flew in the air, landing on her gauzy dress, singeing it in several places.
The bird began to sing. It had a strong, clear tone.
“He sings beautifully,” Piper said.
“They don’t sing as much since the fire. The smoke and soot, I guess.”
Piper saw more evidence of the fire that had sent Sybil to the hospital. To the left of her chair a portion of the carpet had been cut away but not replaced. A space on the other side of the lamp table, where the burned matching chair had sat, looked oddly bare and unbalanced. The empty curtain rods held a fine film of soot.
“Belle has a handyman she highly recommends. I can give you his number when you’re ready to renovate.”
Mr. Moto came into the room. He sized her up and smiled a smile that was anything but friendly. He inspected the oxygen tank to make certain that it was turned off. Sybil did not acknowledge him. In fact, she seemed to avoid eye contact with him. Yet Piper swore she’d caught a spark of emotion in her eyes when he first entered the room: fear, anguish, hostility? Sybil sipped her scotch, picked absently at the tiny burn hole in her dress. Mr. Moto took his time, strolling around the room adjusting the blinds, an ashtray, and a magazine here and there. For one moment, she thought he might ask if Sybil wanted anything, but he didn’t. Instead, he approached the birdcage, looked down at the publicity photo, and with the toe of his shoe flipped the picture over. The bird had stopped singing the moment he’d entered the room. Now it began to flap its wings. He reached for the cage. The bird flew around the cage wildly, crashing into the bars, dropping to the bottom of the cage. Moto slowly pulled his hand away, turned, and left the room.
Piper watched him go. When she no longer heard his footsteps in the hallway, she turned back to Sybil. Her eyes were closed. “Mrs. Squire?”
After lightly touching Sybil’s hand and getting no response, she removed the smoldering butt from between her fingers. For the first time she noticed the angry scars from the deep burns on both of her hands. The exquisite diamond ring sparkled.
Piper sat on her heels staring into her face. She lightly stroked the back of one burned hand. Out of the corner of her eye, Piper spotted the nurse’s dark silhouette at the end of the hall, arms folded across her chest, watching her. She rose to her feet, picked up the photo, and let herself out.
What have I accomplished? she asked herself. She
still had no idea what was going on in that house, whether she was being properly cared for or not. By the amount of liquor Sybil had consumed, she was clearly not being deprived of any alcoholic fortification. She didn’t seem to be in any great distress; no secret notes passed to her, no whispered pleas for help and no frantic eye movements. In fact, so unfazed was Sybil that she had dropped off to sleep. Yet something at the back of Piper’s mind wriggled and squirmed uncomfortably. Mr. Moto’s presence in the room was threatening to say to least. Had she feigned sleep? Why had she mentioned a movie that wasn’t hers, and why give her a publicity photo without being asked for one?
Two things came to mind. Either Sybil was mentally unbalanced, as the nurse had said, or she was trying to tell Piper something.
CHAPTER TEN
The Star Tattler — October 1945 [Archive]
Nineteen-year-old actress Sybil Squire, touring with the USO troupe, wowed our service boys on military bases both at home and overseas. Look out movie America, this platinum bombshell is on her way!
—Cricket Summers: Columnist to the Stars
Twice that week the Vogt’s security alarm in the main house went off in the middle of the night. Both times a patrol car came to check it out, but found nothing. The three main doors were motion activated. A good stiff breeze, or the Vogt’s cockatoo, loose from his cage, could have triggered the alarm. After the second incident, she made certain Dr. J stayed in his cage and that the cage door remained latched—a form of punishment that pissed him off royally—and it didn’t happen again.
She fell into a daily routine of feeding the Vogt’s bird, watering the plants throughout the two-story house, and going to the mailbox to fetch the newspapers and mail. Sorting through the mail, faxing or scanning items to Mick and Belle in Hong Kong, watering the never-ending plants—all were time-sucks when she had other priorities. Usually socializing with Dr J was a welcome break to stretch her legs and rest her eyes from the screens, both TV and monitors. Piper squeezed in her own networking phone calls to line up her next job. In this town, you had to get your next gig while the iron was hot, while you were still in demand, while you had a job.
The day flashed by like a blur, and by late afternoon, she was hard at work on the documentary. Sticking to her self-imposed schedule of seven hours on the documentary, she realized she needed to put in some additional research. She thought she knew the films, but the tiny details were illusive. She needed to watch them again with a fresh eye. Mick's notes and clip list sometimes lacked emotional specifics even though the time specifics made the clips easy to find. He'd write something like....”that scene at the 22 minute mark where she looks screen right, use fifteen seconds then cut to...” Piper needed the time slots, but as the editor, she needed to understand the bigger picture of all of the films together, what emotional core linked them and made them the greatest of the film noirs.
Drawn to Sybil’s classic movie, Black Ribbon, editing it was like a secret indulgence. She was being paid to do something she enjoyed. The Oscar-nominated thriller was the story of deep family ties. Of love, loss and sacrifice. A story that mimicked Sybil’s own life.
No matter how many times Piper watched that final scene, tears filled her eyes and a lump rose in her throat.
#
A week after Piper’s visit with Sybil, she saw Judith Avidon coming out of the bank. Preoccupied with counting a thick wad of cash, Avidon walked right by her on the sidewalk and into the drugstore. She was alone. Piper looked for and found the big black Lincoln parked in a lot across the street. Mr. Moto was nowhere around it. She waited a moment and then, like an amateur sleuth, followed the nurse into the drugstore. She lurked behind a display of sunglasses while the pharmacist filled four prescriptions, then rang up her other purchases of duct tape, a bottle of cheap Scotch, and a length of nylon clothesline.
Red flags went up. Piper considered notifying the authorities, someone connected with the fraud division or social services, but decided that a few sundry items bought at a drugstore was not enough to confront them with her suspicions. She would do some checking on her own first.
The next day, she witnessed another concerning situation. The huge orange tomcat, the neighborhood stray, sat on Sybil’s patio. The blinds in the sunroom were open. Piper looked through the telescope that she had taken from the main house. Inside the room, she saw the birdcages, four of them. The birds were silent. Just then, the nurse stepped outside. She expected her to shoo the cat away. Instead, she bent over and placed a small bowl on the bricks. The cat practically dove at it, his back up, his face buried deep into the bowl. The nurse squatted on her heels and waited while the cat ate. When it had finished, she took the bowl and returned to the house. Minutes later Piper heard a woman’s voice raised in anger. “Stupid pig! … stubborn, bullheaded idiot!” Then glass breaking.
That evening at twilight, Piper noticed the drapes in the master bedroom were partially open. Through the telescope lens, she saw Sybil sitting on the edge of her bed. She wore a dressing gown, one side draped off her swimmer’s square, broad shoulder. Her hair uncombed, no makeup, Sybil sat staring straight ahead with her hands folded in her lap. Nurse Avidon came into view holding a bottle and a glass of water. She lifted Sybil’s hand, turned it over and shook something into her palm. Pills. Sybil merely stared at her palm until the nurse pushed her hand toward her mouth. Sybil obediently took the pills into her mouth and drank from the glass. The nurse left the room.
Sybil rose from the bed unsteadily, crossed the room, spit the pills into her hand and dropped them out the open window.
Piper had to get those pills.
#
Piper waited until dark. Getting in and out unseen was one problem, finding the pills was another. She chose the back way, through the gap in the two property walls, the route pointed out by Sybil’s housekeeper the day she joined Sybil for coffee. It was shorter to take the driveway route, a straight route from the street, but that way was in the open, with less trees and foliage for cover.
Lights burned in the back rooms of the mansion. Seeing Judith and Mr. Moto in the kitchen gave her the courage to make a dash from behind the pool house to the lemon tree across from Sybil’s window. She paused for a moment to control her breathing, then stole across the driveway to the area under the window. There, she crouched on her haunches to the side of a lilac bush like a wary rabbit. She felt for the pill with her fingertips. She leaned down, wishing she had brought a penlight, and searched again. She heard voices from the house. The caregivers. As long as they remained inside the house, she felt safe. Where were those damn pills? Bright lights suddenly blazed beneath the pale green water of the swimming pool. The back door opened. Moto and Judith Avidon came through, speaking in hushed tones. They wore robes, and on their feet flip-flops that slapped on the concrete as they walked.
She held her breath. Her palms began to sweat. Moto’s footsteps picked up speed, the slapping sound growing louder, coming nearer.
“You little bastard,” he growled out. “I got you now!”
Piper flattened herself to the house, her heart pounding insanely in her chest.
She heard a screech. Something brushed past her ankle. A large cat raced past her and up into the branches of the lemon tree. It was the orange cat he was chasing after, and not her. Her relief was short-lived. Moto turned to follow the cat’s path, a path that would lead straight to her and her hiding place.
“Let him go, Jack,” the nurse called out. “I have plans for him.”
Moto picked up a pebble and lobbed it at the cat crouched in the lower branches. The pebble hit the trunk with a solid thwack and dropped to the ground. He continued to come closer. It took all her will power not to bolt from her hiding place. He stopped three feet away. His feet in the flip-flops caught the light from the pool. At the tip of his big toe, she saw the pill. He turned. The flip-flops slapped their way back up the driveway.
Through the bush, she could see the pool. The nurse had removed the r
obe and was sitting on the steps, waist-deep in the water. Mr. Moto removed his eyeglasses and dove into the deep end. Piper reached out and snagged the pill. She made her escape then, moving briskly in the opposite direction, down the edge of the driveway to the street until she was out of their line of vision. Then she ran like hell.
Once inside the guesthouse, she opened her sweaty, trembling hand. The pill’s engraved brand had dissolved away, but it still held its shape and color. She stashed it in the medicine cabinet for safekeeping until she could have it checked out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
On the night she won an Oscar for her role in Shady Lady, Sybil eloped with western star, Chance Watson. Chance was the rough and tumble hero who had rescued Sybil from her taskmaster of a father. “He sent her daddy packing, but not before daddy had blown all of Sybil’s money,” said Sybil’s friend, Mae Gilbert. “Chance and Sybil seemed happy enough until Chance got kicked in the head by that bucking horse. He wasn’t right from then on. Turned mean and crazy. When that blood clot in his brain killed him, Sybil had to be … well, relieved.” Sybil borrowed money from the studio to bury her husband. At twenty-five, she was a widow, three months pregnant and flat broke.
—Excerpt from the biography of Sybil Squire: The Platinum Widow
by Russell Cassevantes
The next morning, Piper sat with her coffee at the telescope, waiting. Sybil appeared outside the house sporting a black eye, a fist-sized shiner. Her translucent, pale skin made the shiner literally pulsate with color, giving her a haunting, ghoulish look. Her flyaway white hair only magnified the horror of this picture. She stood on the back steps wearing an ivory, full-length ermine coat. The heavy coat added to the oddity of the situation. The temperature that morning was in the eighties, and rising.