JO03 - Detour to Murder (19 page)

C H A P T E R 
30

The three of us moved
into the dining room. Rita had skipped lunch interviewing Jerome, and of course Sol was always hungry. My appetite had diminished once it became obvious that I’d wound up back on square one with the Roberts case. For a moment I’d thought for sure that Jerome had murdered both Vera and Mrs. Hathaway, especially after I found out that the mystery woman and the hired muscle in the Buick were connected to him. But then it hit me: it didn’t all fit, as I’d thought at first. Mrs. Hathaway had told her niece that she was blackmailing someone “high in the government”. Obviously, that didn’t fit Jerome. Anyhow, I still figured he was somehow involved in framing Roberts. But I didn’t know how—or why.

We had dinner in Sol’s private booth at the back of the room. While we ate, Rita and Sol talked and laughed, and every now and then I jumped in with a word or two just to be social. We kept the Roberts case under wraps, but the subject never left my mind.

André came to the table several times, paying obsequious attention to Sol’s comments about the new piano player and his song repertoire. Sol raved about the guy, of course. I rolled my eyes when he said the entertainer had panache with the ivories, and flair in his voice like he hadn’t heard in years. “By God, André, the man sounds a lot like Tex Beneke.”

Rita leaned into me. “Who’s Tex Beneke?” she whispered.

“Old guy who used to play the trombone and sing with the Glenn Miller band,” I said.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, Mr. Silverman, he does sound like Tex Beneke,” André told Sol. “Tex is his kid brother.”

Rita leaned in again. “Geez, the guy’s kinda old.”

“About a hundred,” I said.

Rita left at nine. She wanted to get an early start on the Roberts case. She planned on corroborating Jerome’s story by visiting the old MGM studio in Culver City. It was a long shot, she said; the company has changed ownership a couple of times since 1945, but maybe an old-timer might still be there who remembered the incident.

Sol told her that Mannix himself had died about ten years ago. Strickling, his cohort, was retired, but he was still around and might remember Vera’s calls. Sol told Rita to stop by his office in the morning. He’d have his people pull the company file that held updated information on prominent and/or notorious people. It would have Strickling’s current address listed.

I didn’t mention my conversation with Mabel, the one where I agreed to pull Rita off the case and have her spend time searching for new clients. With the loan from Sol, Rita could continue with the Roberts case. It wasn’t just about setting the record straight that drove me now. It was personal.

After Rita left, Sol and I moseyed into the bar. He wanted to listen to the entertainer a while before heading home. “It’s not every day you get to hear Tex Beneke’s brother,” he said.

I nodded and under my breath added, “Thank God.” But what would it hurt to hang with him for an hour? I had nothing to do but go home to an empty apartment.

Forty-five minutes later, after the piano player had run though “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” one too many times, I left Rocco’s and headed home. The last thing I heard as I went out the door was Sol shouting out in a deep baritone voice, “One more time, Tex. Take us down the line. Pardon me, boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo…” Sol never could sing worth a damn.

I drove through the dark streets of Downey. The town was completely quiet, not a car or pedestrian in sight, and the thugs didn’t seem to be following me. Maybe it was past their bedtime. One thing for sure: they could use a little beauty sleep. Anything would help.

Stevie Wonder’s hit song, “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” played on the car radio. The song was an angry blast aimed directly at ex-President Nixon, who had resigned a few months before, but it could’ve just as easily been about me. At least my troubles weren’t fodder for the national media. I wondered how I’d feel if every morning I woke up and read headlines about my life.
O’Brien’s broke again
. Or
O’Brien’s office manager quit today, had to be bailed out by a friend
. Better yet,
O’Brien’s nowhere with his big case
.

As I swung into the carport behind my apartment building the Chevy’s headlights illuminated my parking stall. I thought I saw a lone figure standing in a dimly lit area several feet to my left, but when I looked again, the image was gone. Whoever had been there must’ve stepped back in the shadows.

I sat in the car for a few minutes with the lights on and the engine running. Maybe no one was there. Maybe I just thought I saw someone. Maybe, I’m becoming spooked. Maybe all that talk about blackmail, murder, and powerful people after my ass had me jumpy. What was I going to do now? Drive off? Let the bogyman chase me down the street and then drive around the block for the rest of my life?

I killed the engine and lights and walked to the back stairs leading up to my apartment. My neighbor, Norm, an elderly gentleman, must’ve fallen asleep in front of his TV again. Johnny Carson’s monologue and the laughter seeped through the thin wall as I walked along the outside balcony toward number 2-B—my home. I stopped in front of the door, fumbling for the keys.

I had the door unlocked and pushed halfway open when I heard a soft female voice close behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Can I talk to you?” the voice said.

I jerked around, still holding the knob of the half-opened door. The mystery woman in a cashmere trench coat faced me. “Jesus, lady! You damn near gave me a heart attack, sneaking up on me like that. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

She nodded toward the apartment. “Let’s go in and talk.”

I pushed her aside and took a quick glance along the balcony and down the stairs. Her musclemen were nowhere in sight. I turned back and grabbed her by the shoulders.

She shrugged me off. “Keep your hands to yourself,” she said.

“Okay, lady, who are you? Why are you and your thugs following me around?”

Her eyes flared. “My name is Kathie Rayfield, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know
anything
about any thugs,” she said in a voice tinged with defiance.

“What do you want?”

“I just want to talk for a moment.”

My pulse slowly returned to normal. “Are those guys in the Buick hiding around here someplace?”

“What Buick? What guys?”

“Cut the crap, Kathie. You know exactly who I’m referring to, the hoods at the In-N-Out burger joint where I saw you the first time.”

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

My face was only inches from hers. I was close enough to inhale her scent, a flowery fragrance that smelled like it came from a bottle of money. Maybe it was her beauty, the shading of her face lit by the moon, the flash of her eyes, or maybe it was her obstinate denial of the thugs that weakened my resistance. I wanted to believe her.

“I’m talking about the guys in the Buick—the thugs who were parked at the In-N-Out that day in Chino?”

She took a deep breath. “Mr. O’Brien, I told you before…wait, I remember now.”

“Remember what?”

“Seeing that black car. It followed you when you drove away from the prison. They were right in front of me.” She looked up at the moon, bright in the night sky. “I was following you, too.”

“A regular parade. I was the clown leading the band.”

“Then the car pulled into burger place behind you and parked. I wondered who they were, thought maybe they were the police, or investigators working for the DA, keeping an eye on you.”

“You had nothing to do with them?”

She looked up at me with those baby blues. “No, I don’t know anything about them. It’s just a coincidence that they were also there. Who were they, anyway?”

She sounded sincere. I could have been mistaken that day. When she glanced at the Buick after warning me off the case, I just assumed she had been tied in with them. But I hadn’t seen her connected with the thugs since then. If what she’d just told me was true, then that meant there were others who wanted Roberts to remain in prison. However, it seemed like an awfully big coincidence that there would be more than one person or persons interested in my client’s freedom.

But of course, there were a lot of people who’d be up to their eyeballs in a morass of crap if all the facts about the Roberts murder case came to light. Starting with Frank Byron, the DA back in ’45, the guy who’d duped him into to confessing to Vera’s murder in the first place.

“You must’ve been waiting for me when I left the prison after my first interview with Roberts. How’d you know I’d be assigned to the case? That I’d be at the prison that day?”

“Simple.”

“Suppose you tell me.”

“News about the Roberts parole hearing was in the
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
, a small piece in the local news section. The article said you were going to be his attorney. It mentioned the day and time when you were scheduled to be there.”

“The hearing made the papers?”

“It wasn’t in the
Times
, just the
Examiner.
The paper is owned by the Hearst organization. They cover a lot of gory crime stuff. They recently did a retrospective—you know, an article on L.A. in the forties. The piece touched on Frank Byron’s career and mentioned the woman’s tragic death. I have a clipping service that sends me anything in the news even remotely connected to my father.”

“Your father? What are you talking about?”

“My father is Francis Q. Jerome.”

“I see…” So that’s how she was connected with the actor. That’s why she was driving his car. Now it fit.

“And my mother was one of his wives, Mildred Rayfield.” She paused for a beat. “Her professional name was Sue Harvey.”

C H A P T E R 
31

I flipped on the light
as I thought about what she’d just told me. Kathie glanced around. “Quaint,” she said, surveying the décor in my apartment, a couple of beanbag chairs and a portable Zenith TV resting on an end table against the wall. One of the TV’s rabbit-ear antennas was broken. It hung limp like the useless appendage of a neutered donkey. I’d been meaning to get it fixed.

“Pull up a beanbag and stay a while,” I said, bracing myself in the opening to the kitchenette off to the right. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Do you have coffee?” she asked.

“Of course.”

She glanced around again. “And a table?”

I nodded over my shoulder toward the kitchenette. “Yeah, all the modern conveniences. The designer insisted.”

“Let’s sit in the kitchen. I’ll make the coffee.”

I couldn’t remember the last I had been alone in my apartment with a beautiful woman—any woman, for that matter. Not since my divorce. But I had questions that needed answers.

“I want to know what in the hell is going on. Why are you here, anyway?” I said.

“I’ll tell you the whole story while we have coffee.” She shrugged out of her coat and dropped it on a beanbag. Underneath she wore tight fitting, bell-bottom jeans with a plain sleeveless knit shirt. Her figure was just as I’d remembered it—stunning.

I stepped aside and she marched into the kitchenette. Looking in the cupboard, she found a can of Yuban and proceeded to make a pot of coffee. Soon the fresh-brewed aroma filled the air. She brought two cups and sat at the table across from me. Clutching her cup with both hands, she raised it slowly and took a sip. I waited patiently to hear her story.

She set the cup down, paused, and focused on the tabletop. “Where shall I begin?”

I leaned back and folded my arms. “Why are you involved?”

“As I told you, my last name is Rayfield. I was given my mother’s maiden name when my father at first disavowed my parentage. I was born in Los Angeles, but spent my childhood in Europe. I didn’t really know my father until I was practically grown up. Oh, I knew he’d been in the movies. But when I was a child he was just a name and a face.”

“Your mother never talked about him?”

She shook her head. “I rarely saw my mother, even when I was young and living with her in Beverly Hills, before she lost the house.”

“That must’ve been tough.”

“After my mother’s marriage fell apart she hung on for a while, but then things deteriorated. She went from a life of luxury, the wife of a big-time movie star—living in a mansion with servants and a five-thousand-a-week allowance—to being a five-dollar party girl. It happened in a matter of a few years.”

“You didn’t have relatives? Grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles?”

She scowled. “Oh, I had lots of uncles, all right. Uncle Tom, Uncle Bill, Uncle Mac, Uncle Bob, Uncle Joe—men my mother would bring home at night. I lost track of how many uncles I had,” she said sarcastically. “It wasn’t long before I was taken away by my father’s parents, from back east. They sent me to Europe to live in a boarding school. I was confused and too young to understand what it was all about. Later, I went to the university in Montreux, Switzerland. After graduation I came home.”

I began to feel a certain compassion for her, the life she’d led—not the part about living in Europe, but the loneliness she must’ve felt not knowing her father, and the sorrow that must’ve filled her heart, realizing her mother had hit the skids.

I needed to understand why she had wanted Roberts to remain in prison. She had her reasons, and I felt she’d get around to telling me. But I couldn’t get the thugs in the Buick out off my mind. Kathie came here of her own free will to explain why she was involved, and that counted for a lot. I hoped her alluring charms weren’t prejudicing my reasoning, but it was hard to believe that she could have been the type of person who would’ve hired thugs to murder an old woman like Mrs. Hathaway.

“What happened when you came back home?”

“By then I knew a lot more about my father. I mean, I knew he’d been a big motion picture actor in his day. But still I had no desire to meet with him. First of all, I didn’t think he’d want to see me. Secondly, I didn’t care.”

“What about your mother and your grandparents?”

“While I was away, I hadn’t heard anything about my mother. But when I got home, I contacted my paternal grandparents and they told me she had died. So, naturally, my grandparents wanted nothing to do with me. After all, I had my mother’s blood in my veins. I was a grown woman and their obligation to their son’s daughter was finished.”

“What did you do then?”

“I bummed around for a few years, and then I finally got a job at a magazine in San Francisco,
Rolling Stone.”

“Sooner or later,” I said, “you must’ve made a connection with your father. You’re driving his car.”

She looked surprised that I knew about the Mercedes. “Oh, so you did do your homework.”

“Yeah, I got the plate number—”

“He has no license, can’t drive anymore,” she said, a slight edge to her voice.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t prying. I had to know more about you, that’s all.”

“Of course, Jimmy, I understand. Is it okay to call you Jimmy?”

“Sure. But tell me. When did you get together with Jerome?”

“A few years ago,” she said. “It’d been a long time since he’d agreed to have me sent away to Europe. I’d heard that he had retired and was in ill health and had moved into the home.”

“So you decide to make your peace?”

“Yes, and he finally acknowledged me as his own flesh and blood. He explained how it would have hurt his career being a single man with a child in…” she practically spat out the last word, “…
Hollywood.”
She pushed her coffee cup aside. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“I’m now doing what his parents did all those years ago, taking care of him, fostering his image.”

“I guess he was kind of wild back in those days.”

“He deserted my mother when she was pregnant with me, and chased every skirt in town. He was an alcoholic and a reprobate. But, hey, we all have our little faults.”

I was beginning to like this woman more and more. To maintain a sense of humor after all she had been though and not carry a grudge against Jerome made her a rare person, indeed.

“My father explained how it would have been impossible to provide a decent home for me in those days if I’d lived with him,” she continued. “That he wouldn’t have been the best role model for a young girl. And he felt if I were raised in Europe instead of the hostile environment of the film industry… well, you know the rest.” She paused again, massaging her temples with the knuckles of her hands. “Perhaps he was right. He also told me my mother was being well cared for.”

She stopped talking and I took a sip of coffee and set the cup down. “It’s cold,” I said.

“I’ll warm it up.”

She went to the stove and picked up the pot. “Did you know Al Roberts and my mother had been engaged back in New York before she left him to come to L.A.?” she said.

I watched her refill my cup. “Yeah, I knew. I heard a little about his life in New York. He didn’t talk much about Sue, but I put together a few facts from what he had told me and from other sources. I knew she’d dumped him to become a movie star.”

“She loved Alexander Roberts, you know,” she said as she sat down again. “She married my father for fame and prestige, but she really loved Al.”

“Must’ve been tough being married to one guy and in love with another.”

“She had a complete mental collapse. It destroyed my mother when she’d heard that Roberts had murdered two people while trying to get to L.A. to be with her.”

“He didn’t do it, you know.”

“Yes, I know that now.”

“You do? You believe me?”

“Well, yes…”

“How come you think he’s innocent all of a sudden?”

“I… don’t know if I should tell you. I was asked to keep quiet—”

“What are you talking about? Asked by
who?”

“My mother.”

“Your mother? My god! I thought she was dead.”

“No, she’s in a sanitarium. My father wanted to keep her out of the spotlight. For her own good.”

I jumped out of the chair, spilling my coffee. “Christ Almighty, do you realize Al Roberts may be trying to find her?”

“It was Al who told me about the new evidence you uncovered. And I believe him.”

“What!
You talked to Al Roberts? Where? When?”

“I talked to him this afternoon.”