by Blue Suede Clues: A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley
“I’m sure it was.”
“She wasn’t hard to find, actually,” Regis said. “Still lives in the same neighborhood, although not with her mother any more. She works in a nursing home. A lot of bedpan duty, from what I gather. Let’s just say she dreams of better things to come.”
Regis paused, his eyes flicking around the office, clearly scanning for a little evening pick-me-up. But apparently he was too eager to continue with his story to interrupt himself.
“Anyway, I didn’t pull any punches with her,” he went on. “I told her we were reopening the Littlejon case. Didn’t mention your name, of course. And I asked her what she knew about her late little sister’s love life.”
“And?”
“Nothing,” Regis replied, with an odd smile. “She didn’t know a damned thing about it.”
Elvis screwed up his face. “Where’s the enchilada, Regis?”
“The enchilada is that Norma was just thrilled to finally be talking with a bonafide lawyer. That’s me. Because Norma needed some expert legal advice on how to get her hands on Holly’s savings account, not to mention her safety deposit box. It seems that Holly was a good saver. Very good. She left behind two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And God knows what in her safety deposit box.”
“That’s a lot of savings for a chorus girl,” Elvis said.
“I know you people are notoriously overpaid, but I’d say so,” Regis said.
“Where do you suppose she got it?”
“I don’t know and neither does Norma,” Regis said. “To put it mildly, I don’t think the sisters were very close. I’ve seen pictures of Holly, and the gene pool seems to have overspent on her. Making up for the fact that it underspent on Norma. She’s more than a bit chunky and somehow her eyes don’t match. And if she ever forgot for a minute that she wasn’t the family beauty, apparently Holly was always ready to remind her.”
“Doesn’t Holly’s money belong to the mother?” Elvis asked.
“Technically, if there was no will, yes,” Regis said. “But Mrs. McDougal doesn’t know about the savings account. Or the safety deposit box, for that matter. Anyway, it’s kind of open ended until we find out where exactly the money came from. There’s always the chance that it was ill-got gains.”
“How does Norma know about it anyhow?”
“She found the bank book and the key cleaning out Holly’s room,” Regis said. “This was only a few months ago. Mrs. McDougal wouldn’t let anybody touch the room for years after Holly’s death. Kept it as kind of a shrine, like Miss Haversham’s wedding house.”
“Miss Haversham?”
“Dickens. Great Expectations. You should read it, Elvis.”
“I’ll get to it after Dr. Freud,” Elvis said. “So where do we go with this, Regis?”
“Well, it certainly might be helpful to get into that safety deposit box,” Regis said. “The stuff people put in those boxes usually come with a story attached. Something you can trace back to where it came from. A lot more promising than anonymous bank notes.”
“And how exactly do we get into the safety deposit box?”
“I don’t know, but I’m thinking about it. That’s what I like about this business—the challenge.”
“Right, the challenge,” Elvis said. His stomach grumbled. Little wonder, he hadn’t had a bite since his breakfast toast. He looked at his watch—7:10. “Hold on—I got to make a phone call, Regis. Right now.”
“Go ahead,” Regis said. “I’ve got business to attend to anyhow.” He sauntered out of the office like a man on a mission, that mission undoubtedly being a trip to the corner liquor store.
Elvis retrieved the scrap of paper Colonel had given him and dialed the long-distance operator. He gave her the Atlanta phone number. It rang just once, then, “Hello. Who is this?”
“Elvis Presley, ma’am.”
“What’s the password?” the woman said.
“Password?”
“Yes, you’re supposed to have a password so I know it’s really you.”
It seems Parker’s secretary hadn’t bothered to jot down that part.
“I’m sorry, Miss Spinelli, but nobody gave me a password,” Elvis said.
“I can’t risk it then,” Spinelli said. “Good-bye, Mr. Presley, or whoever you are.”
“Wait a second,” Elvis said. “Billy Jackson gave you this password, right?”
“That’s right. He’s a good man, by the way. And quite attractive.”
Elvis had to smile at that. Billy would be happy to hear that he still had the old charm. “You have good taste,” he said to Connie Spinelli.
“He took me out for drinks to a black bar,” she went on. “I’ve always wanted to go in one of those, but it’s not something a woman does on her own. Not a white woman, at least.”
“I imagine not,” Elvis said. It was beginning to sound as if old Billy had made the most of this personal favor.
“Well, I’m sorry we can’t talk more,” Spinelli was saying. “They have a way of tracking you down and making your life miserable, you know.”
“Who does?”
“I’m sorry,” Spinelli said. “I can’t do this.”
“Selma!” Elvis blurted out spontaneously. “The password is ‘Selma.’”
“Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place, Mr. Presley?” Spinelli exclaimed.
“I don’t know, Miss Spinelli,” Elvis said. “So, what can you tell me about Holly McDougal?”
“A lot,” Spinelli said. Then, “Listen, you’re not calling from the studio are you? They can—”
“No, I’m at a friend’s phone,” Elvis said. “And there’s nobody else here at the moment.”
“Okay, thanks,” Spinelli said. She took an audible deep breath before continuing. “I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. But the truth is the truth, living or dead, right Mr. Presley?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, Holly was not a bad kid. Not really. But she had the bug, the same bug most of the girls in the business have, but maybe a little more so. She wanted to make it big, big as it gets. She wanted to be a star. Like you, Mr. Presley.”
“I see,” Elvis said, although the way Spinelli put it, being a star didn’t sound like something that any healthy person would aspire to. Maybe she was right.
“You can’t say that Holly’s approach was particularly original,” Spinelli went on. “All those gags about the casting director’s couch didn’t come out of thin air, you know. I’d say more than half of the starlets and chorus girls put in time on somebody’s couch. Hell, Marilyn Monroe, may her soul rest in peace, wasn’t averse to keeping the big bosses happy in a personal way. Comes with the territory, I guess.”
“I guess it does,” Elvis said. None of this was really a surprise to him, but it gave him a queasy feeling anyhow.
“But with Holly, the whole thing kind of took on a life of its own,” Spinelli went on. “I don’t know exactly where you draw the line between trading favors for parts in movies and being an out-and-out call girl, but I’d say that Holly crossed that line wherever it is.”
“She told you this?”
“Certainly did,” Spinelli said. “I’d be doing her nails—that’s my specialty, you know—I’d be doing her nails and she would chatter away about this one and that one she’d been with. I’ve got to say, the whole business didn’t seem like a chore to her. She seemed to take real pride in it. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose—taking pride in your work.”
“Did she mention any of the men by name?” Elvis asked.
“Some,” Spinelli said. “A couple of casting directors I knew of. A few talent agents. And a whole lot of other people I never heard of. I didn’t keep track. It’s quite a list.”
“So she was, you know—she was charging a fee for her services?” Elvis asked.
Spinelli laughed. “Why, Mr. Presley, that’s hard for you to ask, isn’t it? You are a Southern gentleman, just like they say. I’m sti
ll not used to that out here. Not after Hollywood.”
“She was just so young, that’s all,” Elvis said, feeling embarassed, although he was not sure why.
“Holly was seventeen going on thirty, like most of them,” Spinelli said. “Girls grow up faster out there. Age faster too. Believe me, that’s something you learn very quickly in the makeup department.”
Elvis scratched his jaw. He did not have any idea what a call girl charged, but it was hard to imagine it adding up to a quarter of a million dollars in just a couple of years.
“Where … Where did Holly meet her … clients?” he asked.
Spinelli laughed again. “Oh, this is the real crazy part,” she said. “Holly set herself up right there on the lot. She said that way she was always available if a part came up. She’d check in all day with the line producers—you know, to see if some chorus girl called in sick or broke her ankle or something. And if a part came up, she’d just leave some guy stranded, waiting for her in the stunt shack.”
“The stunt shack? Is that where she—”
“Yes, that was Holly’s little base of operations,” Spinelli said. “It didn’t strike me as a Paris boudoir exactly. Not particularly private, for one thing. Have you ever been out there?”
“Just yesterday,” Elvis said. No need to tell Spinelli about his harness adventure.
“So you know what I mean,” Spinelli went on. “But Holly said that most of the men liked it. Something macho about the setting. You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Presley, but when it comes to men’s sexual predilections, I get out of my depth pretty fast. That’s probably why I’m still single.”
“To tell you the truth, Miss Spinelli, I don’t understand that much about it myself,” Elvis said.
This time Spinelli laughed so hard that she had to set down the receiver for a moment. When she came back on, she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Presley, but that sure takes the prize—Elvis Presley doesn’t understand that much about sex—”
“I just meant the strange stuff, ma’am,” Elvis interjected quickly and a little more loudly than he had intended.
“Well, God bless you for that, Mr. Presley,” Spinelli said. “It takes a real man to admit something like that.”
Elvis was about to thank her for the compliment, but stopped himself, realizing that he wanted to get off this little side topic as swiftly as possible.
“So all the stuntmen must have known what was going on,” he said.
“I don’t know about all of them,” Spinelli said. “Some of those stunt kids can be pretty wet behind the ears. The cowboys and rodeo punks especially. But the regulars knew what was up, all right. They took out her rent in trade, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” Elvis said. He looked up; Regis was sailing back in the office door with a smug expression on his face. “One more thing, Miss Spinelli. A few years back, you made a date with an attorney, man named Regis Clifford, to talk about Holly. But you never made it. In fact, you more or less disappeared after that. What happened?”
For almost a minute, Connie Spinelli did not say a word.
“Ma’ am?”
“I was told to leave,” Spinelli said flatly.
“Who told you?”
“I didn’t see his face,” Spinelli said. “He had a gas mask on and an army uniform. First World War. Actually, it looked kind of new, like it was straight out of MGM wardrobe. But his gun wasn’t hard to see.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Miss Spinelli,” Elvis said.
“It’s all right,” she answered. “I’m actually much happier out here.”
“We’ll be in touch, ma’am. You take good care of yourself.”
“Mr. Presley?”
“Yes?”
“Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”
Elvis put his hand to his forehead. He surely did not want to discuss the peculiarities of male sexuality with Connie Spinelli any more, but God knows, he owed her.
“What is it?” Elvis said.
“Is your friend, Dr. Jackson, married?” she asked, sounding just about seventeen—a Tennessee seventeen.
“No, ma’am,” Elvis answered, smiling. “Not the last time I heard, at least.”
The moment Elvis hung up, Regis presented him with a little blue booklet. It was a United States passport.
“Freshly minted,” Regis said proudly. “My pal Rodriguez at the travel agency just happened to have a blank on hand. We clipped a photo of you out of Silver Screen magazine and laminated it in. Looks perfect. The funny thing is, Rodriguez never heard of you and when he typed in your name, he spelled it, ‘El Vez Perez-Lee.’ Cuban Chinese. It’s a good thing I caught it.”
Elvis opened up the passport. The photograph of him was a still from the prerelease publicity kit for Viva Las Vegas. You could see where Senor Rodriguez had scissored Ann-Margret out of the frame.
“I underestimate you, Regis,” Elvis said, smiling. “I was sure you’d gone out for a drink.”
“You don’t underestimate me, Elvis,” Regis replied. “Rodriguez and I toasted our good work with a shot of tequilla.”
14
Hot Sauce
Elvis brought Regis up to date between forkfuls of barbacoa de lomo at La Cucina, a tiny Mexican cafe on the same block as Regis’s office. The Mexican barbecue was so hot you could feel it burning all the way down to your gut, but God knows, it was the real thing for a change, even if you did have to excavate it from some kind of moldy leaf to get at it. Elvis told Regis about Cathcart’s death; his meeting with Nancy Pollard, and her insistence that she had been telling the truth on the witness stand; the man in the blue Beetle who had been following him; and finally about Holly McDougal’s extracurricular activities as described by Connie Spinelli. Regis, who had only ordered a bowl of rice and a pitcher of sangria, grew increasingly excited with each piece of news.
“My friend, it’s a puzzle wrapped in an enigma,” Clifford said. “But we are on our way. Yes, indeed, the hounds have picked up the scent.”
Elvis sawed off a piece of fried plantain and stuck it in his mouth to cool down his palate.
“I’ll tell you, I can taste it already,” Regis went on rhapsodically. “We petition the court, get a new trial, Littlejon’s exonerated. It’s all over the papers. And old LeRoy has got egg all over his face.”
“Is that what this is all about for you, Regis?” Elvis asked. “Beating out your brother?”
Regis poured himself another glass of sangria and gulped it down before answering.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a big chunk of it, Elvis,” Regis said. “I’m not saying it’s pretty. But revenge is what makes the world go around. Basic human emotion. Did you ever read The Count of Monte Cristo?”
“Even if it’s your own kin?” Elvis asked. “Your own twin brother?”
“Especially if it’s your twin brother,” Regis answered. “How about a song about that, my friend? ‘The Twin’s Revenge.’” Regis winked, then called to the waiter in Spanish and in a flash another pitcher of sangria appeared. It was obvious that Regis was a regular at La Cucina; everybody called him, “Senor el Abogato,” which, he explained, meant “Mr. Lawyer.” But, for a nice change, nobody made a fuss about Elvis being there, nobody crowded him. Elvis had wondered if anyone even recognized him in the densely packed cafe—seeing as they were all immigrants—but now, in heavily accented English, the waiter asked, “Can I get you something, Senor Presley?”
“No, I’m just about full up, thank you,” Elvis replied.
“My pleasure, Senor Presley.”
Regis poured himself another glass of sangria. “There are three puzzles we need to unravel as soon as we get back from Mexico,” he said. “First, how Holly accumulated that small fortune. I find it hard to believe myself that it’s just profits from services rendered. Second, I’d like get a first-hand account of how your rodeo friend bit the proverbial dust. Probably it was just a coincidence—an accident at an
inopportune time.”
“I thought you said there were no accidents,” Elvis said.
“I don’t imagine Freud’s theory applies to mad bulls,” Regis said, winking. “And the third thing is, from what you say, I’m starting to wonder if our friend Squirm was telling us the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about his sex life with Miss Pollard.”
“Why don’t we just go up to Tehachapi and ask him?” Elvis said.
“It’s worth a try.”
“I mean right now,” Elvis said, mopping his mouth with a paper napkin.
“For chrissake, it’s seven o’clock,” Regis said. “I think it can wait. Squirm’s not going anywhere.”
“Neither am I,” Elvis said. “My car’s just outside.”
“Jesus, Elvis, we have to get up at three in the morning to catch our plane,” Regis pleaded.
“Best not sleep at all then.”
“Listen, my friend, visiting hours ended four hours ago.”
“I think I can get them to make an exception,” Elvis said. “Do they have a pay phone in here?”
“No, they don’t,” Regis said emphatically.
“You can use our phone, Senor Presley.” It was their waiter, as he removed Elvis’s plate. “At the bar.”
Regis rolled his eyes.
The bartender set the phone on the bar as Elvis approached. Next to it, he placed a shot glass of brandy. “Compliments of the house, Senor Presley,” the bartender said. “I enjoy very much ‘Rubias, Morenas Y Pelirrojas.’”
“Much obliged,” Elvis said. He wanted to ask him what, exactly, that ‘Rubias’ thing meant, but it would have to wait. The operator put him right through to Warden Reardon’s private line.
“Evening, Warden, it’s me again, Elvis.”
“Well, hello, Elvis,” Reardon said. “I thought I’d be hearing from you pretty quick. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”
“Beg pardon?”
“The Singing Warden. Just what you’re looking for, right? Jailhouse Rock with a new twist.”
Only then did Elvis realize what the heck Reardon was talking about.