The Silver Blonde

by Elizabeth Ross

  Clara stirred her drink vigorously. She felt annoyed—obviously he was implying that she was Nancy Drew, a kid detective. Well, she didn’t want to drop it. “What if someone saw you?” she blurted out. “How bad would it look then?”

  “I’ll take the risk.” He looked out the window, and she knew he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Outside, the sky had turned a grubby shade of lilac; the sun had sunk without ceremony. The neon lights blinked on.

  Clara removed the umbrella from her drink. The cherry had fallen to the bottom of her glass, oozing a blood-red trail. “I talked to Babe Bannon on set this morning.” She took a slow sip of her drink and watched Gil carefully over the rim of the glass. “The cops have been asking who might have a grudge against her.”

  “Why?” said Gil sharply.

  Clara shrugged like it was obvious. “They think she’s in danger, I guess. It’s possible she was the intended victim.” It was the opposite of sugarcoating—she had deliberately added a dash of vinegar. It came from a mistrusting place, the part of her that wanted to provoke a reaction, gauge if he still cared about Bannon, and how much.

  Gil drained his beer. Did his face darken? It was hard to tell in the low light.

  The waitress stopped at their table. “Anything else, folks?” She removed the empty beer bottle.

  “Just the check,” said Gil.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rushes

  THURSDAY MORNING, A WEEK since Connie’s death, and the screening room was deserted. Clara was waiting for the detectives to show up. They had requested to screen rushes from the day of the murder, and Clara had been asked to attend in case they had any questions about the footage. She wandered down the aisle and watched the dust motes spiral under the house lights. There were three rows of large velvet seats. Mr. Pearce always sat up front with his secretary—producers and executives relegated to the rows behind. Next to his seat there was a narrow table, room for a telephone, the intercom to talk to Max, a notepad, and a cup of sharpened pencils. She glanced up at the white screen, imagining his perspective at dailies: Next setup, Max. Next reel. That’s enough. Normally if Clara had contrived to stay for dailies, she would have been in the projection booth, her nose pressed against the small window, devouring the images until Max remembered she was there and chased her out.

  She debated whether to try one of the velvet chairs, but chickened out, hovering in the aisle like an usherette. Usherette—she thought instantly of Connie. Clara imagined her leaning under the portrait lights at the Vista. The theater was in Los Feliz, where Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards met. Clara had been there dozens of times. She wondered, was it possible they’d run into each other? Perhaps Connie had taken her ticket or waved her flashlight to guide Clara to her seat?

  Clara returned to the projection booth to wait for Max. On his chair was a copy of today’s Los Angeles Times. She picked up the paper. silver blonde murder stumps lapd. The moniker still bothered her in a way that felt personal, reducing Connie to the color of her hair and the place where she’d worked.

  The door banged, and Clara expected Max to walk into the projection booth. Instead she heard voices in the theater. She peered through the projection window. Detectives Ireland and Rivetti. They were arguing. Clara shrank back from the window and listened by the projection room door. She opened it a crack wider.

  “My money’s still on Connie Milligan.” It was Ireland’s voice. “Gut feeling.”

  “But we have nothing—not one hint of a motive,” said Rivetti. “Nobody gains anything from her death, so far as we can tell. She wasn’t dating anyone—we cleared the vault boy. All in all, she didn’t have much of a social life.”

  Ireland exhaled a laugh. “A girl like that—an attractive young blonde—you really believe she lived like a nun? Her mother said the past couple weekends she spent at the library—gimme a break. She seem like the bookish type to you? It doesn’t add up. The mother must be holding something back.”

  “Why would she hide anything that could help us find her daughter’s killer?” There was a moment of quiet. “It’s been a week since the murder,” said Rivetti, his tone less antagonistic. “The Milligan girl is a dead end.”

  A beat before Ireland answered. “Maybe.” Clara heard a chair creak, followed by a frustrated sigh. “There must be something we’re missing.”

  Clara dared to peek through the projection window again. Rivetti was pacing in front of Ireland, who was lounging in Mr. Pearce’s chair in the front row. “On the one hand we have a murdered stand-in and no motive—not one suspect,” said Rivetti. “On the other hand we have an actress she resembled who happens to have a laundry list of people with a grudge against her. It’s a who’s who of Hollywood.” He counted them on his fingers. “An agent she recently fired, a studio contract she’s threatened to break, a beef with a costar, a testy relationship with the director. Her dead lover’s ex-wife is no fan. Mrs. Quinn—she kept his name—had some colorful things to say about Miss Bannon. Who knows what other skeletons are in the closet next to the fancy gowns.”

  Clara was riveted to the spot, her mind racing. If the cops knew about Gil’s past with Babe, wouldn’t that make him another suspect on Rivetti’s list? The lowly screenwriter hung up on a summer fling with Ruby Kaminsky. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind.

  “Come on. It’s all gossip for the scandal sheets.” Ireland wasn’t buying it.

  “We have to follow up on the Bannon leads,” Rivetti went on. “If we don’t, the killer could try again—this time get the right girl. Then we’ll have two murders on our hands.”

  Ireland stretched and clasped his hands behind his head, legs splayed out. “Two different women; two different cases.” He sighed. “It’s messy. I don’t like it.”

  Clara turned back to the newspaper and stared at the unfeeling headline. She felt truly sorry for Connie—her own murder eclipsed by Babe Bannon. The Silver Blonde. It wasn’t just the treatment that Connie got in the press. Her no-name status had even affected the police investigation. They were giving up on her and turning their attention to the movie star instead. Connie Milligan was barely playing a supporting role in her own murder.

  The screening room door banged. Clara’s heart leapt. Footsteps, and Max joined her in the booth. A few moments later Detective Ireland appeared in the doorway. It probably appeared as though Clara and Max had arrived together.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Detective,” said Max, turning on the projector. “Just a few moments and we’ll be ready.”

  “Miss Berg, you going to talk us through this stuff?” said Ireland. “Come and sit up front.”

  Clara caught Max’s surprised look. She had never been allowed to sit in the theater before. “Sure, let me grab the notes.” She scooped up the script supervisor’s notes and followed Detective Ireland down the aisle.

  Settling into the plush velvet of a front-row seat felt like riding the streetcar without paying. Rivetti sat on one side of Detective Ireland, and Clara sat on the other, Mr. Pearce’s table between them. The screen flickered to life. Max cued up the reel and paused it on the head leader.

  A knock, and a uniformed officer entered the screening room. “Excuse me, Detectives.” He strode down the aisle and handed Detective Ireland a brown paper grocery bag. “The victim’s belongings from her dressing room. The forensic examination is complete. This can be returned to the next of kin.”

  Detective Ireland nodded. “Thanks, son. I’ll handle it.” He took the bag and dismissed the young cop. Clara watched Ireland rustle open the paper bag and poke through the items. She sat up tall in her seat and tried to get a peek inside—but Ireland’s large hands blocked her view.

  Ireland rolled up the paper bag clumsily and placed it on the narrow table between them. Clara stared at it out of the corner of her eye. Despite its mundane appearance, she couldn’t ignore it. She desperate
ly wanted to know what was inside.

  “Right, let’s watch this stuff,” said Ireland. Nothing happened.

  With a small charge of adrenaline, Clara pressed the button on the intercom. “Roll it, Max.” She felt like a studio mogul.

  Max turned down the house lights, and the screening began. The head leader counted down, and the sound of the sync-pop was a switch that flicked in Clara’s brain. It completed a circuit, and she sat transfixed as the silver images came to life—it was night and day from the small screen on Sam’s Moviola.

  “What’s this?” said Detective Ireland.

  “Scene twenty-six,” said Clara, angling the notes to catch the light of the screen. “This is the part where the widow starts to doubt the sergeant. She tries to catch him in a lie. But he’s too clever and smooth. She begins to think she’s going crazy.”

  It was a wide shot of the characters on the mansion set, in the library. It was followed by medium shots of the same scene. The cops watched with serious faces.

  “Why’d they film the same stuff over and over?” asked Rivetti.

  What did he expect, a finished movie? “It’s so they have options on the performance. And the different angles they need to cut the scene together, so it feels real, not like a stage play.”

  Ireland shifted in his seat. “I don’t know about this flick. My wife likes comedies and musicals, a bit of escape. This is kinda grim.”

  Clara turned to him. “It’s a suspense film, Detective—not a musical. It’s supposed to be dark. Haven’t you seen Double Indemnity or Laura?”

  “The black and white—it’s depressing.”

  “It’s stylized,” said Clara. “The lighting is important. It expresses what the character is feeling. It adds to the suspense.”

  “Everyone’s a critic, huh?” said Rivetti.

  Max changed the reel. The screen flickered to life again. The new setup was a close-up favoring Babe Bannon. Clara fancied there must have been a shift in the room, a small electric current pulsing across the detectives’ seat backs. They leaned forward slightly.

  “She looks good,” said Ireland. An understatement. In the close-up Babe Bannon was a vision: her face was luminous, her cheekbones sculpted by the key light—that famous arched brow, and of course the ash-blond hair framing her face like a halo. Confronted with her beauty, Clara realized she would never graduate to this kind of womanhood. But watching Babe Bannon on-screen, somehow you got to be her.

  Clara saw from the notes that the next take was a series: Bannon would do the line several times without the camera cutting between takes. The slate was held up to the camera in front of Bannon’s face. The clapper loader gave the scene, setup, and take number, “Twenty-six, Charlie, take five.” He snapped the arms of the slate together and disappeared from frame. Bannon pursed her lips, blinked a couple of times, and then focused. She waited, a runner before the pistol fires.

  From off-screen the voice of Hawks said, “Action!”

  Bannon took a beat, then threw her head up and tossed out the line of dialogue. “It’s been a long time for me too, Sergeant.” And she held her gaze past the camera, still in character.

  “And again; keep rolling.” Hawks’s voice was impatient. She repeated the move, uttered the line again. “Put some emotion into it, girl,” Hawks barked, off-screen. “Again.” Bannon said the line again. Hawks boomed, “I don’t care, honey. Convince me.” He was wearing her down. She glared at a point past the camera—where Clara assumed the director was standing—and quietly refused to say the line.

  “Almost out of film,” the camera assistant shouted.

  “Cut it,” Hawks said, his tone defeated. Bannon vanished from the frame before the camera stopped rolling.

  “Nice guy,” said Ireland.

  “This must have been when she stormed off set,” said Rivetti.

  Clara told the detectives which were circle takes and what was NG—no good. These were the takes that normally wouldn’t make it to the dailies screening. Max changed reels again, and a different scene came on-screen. It was a night exterior.

  “Now what are we looking at?” said Ireland.

  Clara skimmed the script supervisor notes. “The last scene they shot was the downtown alley—filmed on the back lot.” The set was dressed to look like an unsavory part of town, with overturned trash cans and tramps. Bannon, wrapped in a huge fur coat, stood with her back to camera in lashing rain (a rain machine in the foreground, not on the actor). After the assistant director called action, they watched the widow walk away from camera, up the alley, casting a dramatic shadow behind her. The sergeant character, dressed as a tramp, enters the frame and follows her down the alley.

  Clara said, “This is his first attempt to steal her purse to get the address book with the safe combination. He’s foiled, of course.”

  Ireland tutted. “This guy’s a scoundrel. We should lock him up,” he said, suddenly absorbed in the story. “That’s a US soldier preying on a fallen comrade’s wife.” He shook his head with disgust. “What’s the world coming to?” Clara smirked and looked down at the notes.

  The last setup was the alley establishing shot, a crane shot. The clapper loader held the slate up in frame—it read “MOS”—and then the camera mounted on the crane moved up to its starting position.

  “What happened to the sound?” asked Rivetti.

  “ ‘MOS’ means no sound was recorded. They’ll add sound effects later in the sound mix.”

  “What time was this shot?” said Ireland.

  Clara looked at the notes. “It was seven-thirty p.m.”

  He frowned. “Looks later than that.”

  “They exposed the film to make it look darker than it was,” said Clara.

  Detective Ireland turned to Rivetti. “We should get a list of the extras on set that night. See if anyone has a criminal record.”

  They watched as the widow wrapped in her huge fur walks away from camera down the alley. This time the camera rises slowly above her, making her small and vulnerable, the sergeant lurking in the shadows behind her. Several more takes played out.

  “Here’s my point,” said Rivetti. “Seeing this broad from behind—it’s dark, she’s wearing the right duds, blond hair—can you swear on your mother that it’s Barbara Bannon and not Connie Milligan?”

  He was right. Clara sensed Ireland knew it too.

  Rivetti leaned in close. “The killer got the wrong girl—I’d put money on it.”

  Ireland mulled it over. “We should talk to Bannon again.”

  * * *

  —

  Clara waited in the projection booth for Max to give her back the reels. She heard Rivetti barking into Mr. Pearce’s phone. He was calling the precinct. The screening room door banged. Ireland must have just left. Grabbing the reels, Clara hurried after him. He was already up the stairs, and she lagged behind. It was hard to run with a stack of film reels in her arms. Quickly she checked behind her to make sure Rivetti wasn’t following. She wanted to speak to Ireland alone—he was on Connie’s side. Upstairs, he crossed the art deco foyer of the executive building, then walked through the main doors and into the sunshine. She rushed after him. “Detective!”

  Her eyes were honed in on the brown paper bag of Connie’s belongings. Clara caught up with him by the fountain—the female figure holding a globe aloft.

  “Detective!” Clara called again. He turned around. Clara caught her breath. “Detective, I wanted to ask you—” She was breathless. What should she say? She hadn’t planned this. “You’re not giving up on Connie Milligan, are you?”

  He flinched. “No, of course not.”

  “Connie is dead, and everyone is still acting like it’s all about the movie star.”

  Detective Ireland sized her up. “Look, I understand—you found her. That’s no small thing. You have some c
omplicated feelings about this.” He leaned toward her. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her killer. It’s possible Babe Bannon was the intended victim, but either way, we’ll solve the case.”

  “I want to help.” Clara shifted the film canisters to perch on her other hip. She nodded at the paper bag. “What if I were to return Connie’s belongings?”

  “You?” He looked at her quizzically. “Why?”

  She couldn’t tell him the truth—that she felt a connection, a link to this girl. Somehow they were the same, even though they hadn’t met. “I couldn’t help overhear what you said about Mrs. Milligan, that there might be more to learn from her. Maybe she would talk to a young woman, someone closer in age to her daughter? Someone who’s working on the movie.”

  Detective Ireland chewed it over. “You knew Connie?”

  Clara shook her head. “But I don’t have to lie. I work on the movie. She might assume…”

  Detective Rivetti caught up with them and glanced at Clara out of the corner of his eye like she shouldn’t be there.

  Ireland removed his hat and fanned his face with it. “Rivetti, hear me out on this.” He squinted in the sunlight. “We both suspect that the victim’s mother is holding something back. That, or she just doesn’t like cops.” He winked at Clara. “Detective Rivetti doesn’t have the best bedside manner.” Rivetti narrowed his eyes. Ireland continued, “Seems to me like she might open up to a woman—a young woman closer to her daughter’s age.” He was parroting Clara’s words and pretending they were his own. Clara didn’t mind as long as he could convince his partner.

  Rivetti shifted his position. “Yeah, like who?”

  * * *

  —

  By four-thirty p.m. Clara had been given permission by Sam to leave work early—again. She stood in front of the postproduction building while the detectives gave her instructions for meeting Connie’s mother.