American Blonde (24 page)

“By law, surviving parents can remove children at any time. In 1921, we instituted a policy that legal guardianship is signed over to the home when the children arrive, and the children are discharged when they reach an adult age, or when a single parent remarries.”

As I clicked off the line, I thought, Maybe I can go there. I had visions of myself in disguise, showing up as Mudge, asking to see my son.

That evening, Helen and I worked in the game room, digging through boxes and books. Police had discovered another dead girl down in Bronzeville, near Central Avenue, this one strangled by a silk stocking. They’d also discovered, at the Greyhound Express station downtown, a suitcase belonging to the Black Dahlia.

Helen said, “Apparently there were these stacks of letters from servicemen, and her replies to them, sealed and unsent. The letters were wrapped in red ribbon. I don’t know why I find that the saddest detail of all.”

According to her mother, sister, and friends, Beth, as the Black Dahlia was often called, had been engaged to a boy named Matt Gordon. Before he could marry her, he was killed in a plane crash five days before the war’s official end. The newspaper said the letters in the bus station suitcase reflected a young girl who had been deeply hurt many times by men. In the end, she appeared to be just another girl who wanted someone to love her. I thought Beth Short not only looked like Mudge; she sounded like her.

In three days’ time, more than one hundred suspects had been rounded up and questioned in the Black Dahlia murder case. As nearly a thousand policemen and newspaper reporters combed the city, going door to door, exploring clues from downtown L.A.’s Biltmore Hotel to the culverts of Malibu, the late, great Barbara Fanning was forgotten.

Helen said, “It makes you think—what happened with Mudge, what happened with these girls. It makes you realize how important our time is. My parents want me to come back home and marry someone named Sterling Archer Sanford the Third.” Helen never talked much about her upbringing, but I knew she came from money. “But when I marry—if I marry—it’s going to be because I want to.”

We worked until midnight, and before I went to sleep, I read the first few chapters of
Jane Eyre
.

When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard. . . . I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.

Mudge hadn’t underlined just the romantic passages of
Jane Eyre
. The first pages were as marked up as the later ones.

I set the book aside and picked up
A Woman of Means
by Sam Weldon. It was the story of a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who marries well and has a child, only to have that child taken away from her by the man she loves. A note on the last page read,
SW—This draft best yet. Thank you for creating something I can be proud of. xx BF.

I laid the script and book aside thinking that when it came down to it, I hadn’t really known her at all. And then I got out of bed and found my hatbox in the back of my closet. I sat down to look through it, as if I were someone discovering these things for the first time. If this hatbox was all that was found of me one day, stored in a bus station locker, what would strangers be able to tell of my life and who I was from a collection of clover jewelry, letters, carved wooden figures, a parachute rip cord, my WASP wings, an emerald from the Black Mountains, a little gold wedding band from France, and a handful of songs?

I
t felt good to be back at work, back in a routine that would make the real world go away, at least for a while. We were filming
Flyin’ Jenny Meets Buck Rogers
at the Los Angeles Airport, which substituted as Airdale, Jenny Dare’s home base. The film’s stunt coordinator, Bud Bowdoin, went over the plane with me—range, twelve hundred miles; service ceiling, twenty-six thousand feet; rate of climb, 1,850 feet. As the mechanic refilled the oil and swung the propellers through ten rotations to feel for resistance and any possible hydraulic lock, Bud said, “You know Mayer doesn’t want you doing this.”

“I know.”

Mr. Mayer and I had already discussed it before the first
Flyin’ Jenny
installment:
We cannot have you doing your own stunts. What if something should happen to you?
His voice had climbed an octave and his ears had turned red. I’d heard the stories about Mr. Mayer’s histrionics, his ability to fall on the floor and foam at the mouth and pitch the biggest tantrum you ever saw, bigger and more spectacular than any tantrum thrown by any star.

If someone fills in for me, the audience will be able to tell, and this is Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, sir. They’re going to expect more than that.
I knew it was the one thing he wouldn’t be able to argue with, and he didn’t.

The plane was what they called a Twin Beech, because of its two engines. It was a small, low-wing airplane that had seen war service. It could carry six passengers, and fly a maximum speed of 225 mph.

When the mechanic was finished, I told Bud I wanted to go over the plane myself. He shook his head. “He’s already gone over it, and it checks out fine.”

“Sorry, Mr. Bowdoin, but I’m a pilot through and through. One of the first things we learned in the WASP was that you don’t take off without first going over your plane.”

He looked at Leslie Edgar, who consulted his watch. “That’s fine, Kit,” Les said. “But move as fast as you can, before we lose the light.”

As the entire crew waited for me, I went over everything—brake fluid, rudder cables, hydraulics—searching for any sign of tampering or foul play. This wasn’t something to be hurried along. This was, potentially, my life.

When I was done, Hal MacGinnis and I climbed inside the cockpit, pulling on helmets. The rest of my costume was a pair of tan breeches, a red blouse, a tan scarf, black boots, and red goggles. The view out the window was wide and open. The passenger terminals were still housed in temporary, two-story wooden frame buildings that were under construction, and jackrabbits lived along the runways in the weeds that grew there. I studied the cockpit as Bud showed me the throttle levers in the center, the prop levers to the left, the mixtures to the right, all the handles and buttons and switches. We started the engines, which took a lot of priming—seven strokes with full resistance.

With props at fine pitch and throttles open, the gear warning switch clicked. I selected the RH engine and pressed the start button. It fired after five revolutions with a cloud of smoke and a roaring rumble that I felt in my bones. I pressed the start button on the LH engine and went through the same process.

Bud shouted his last instructions before he walked away: “Remember to lock the tail wheel. Line her up and push the T-bar on the lower section of the throttle quadrant. Try with one of your brakes to check if it’s locked. No flaps for takeoff. Power up to thirty-six inches MAP. Get the tail wheel off the ground, and liftoff follows at sixty knots.”

Hal was so broad and tall, he barely fit inside the plane. The sight of him, hunched up in the copilot’s seat, knees to his chin, started me laughing, which got him laughing. Over the rattle of the engine, he hollered, “Studio wants us to go to Ciro’s tonight, depending on what time we’re through.”

“That’s fine. We don’t have to stay long. By the way, do you know why Shelby Jordan is suddenly hanging around Metro?”

“Keeping an eye on her wandering husband? Or maybe doing some wandering of her own with Buck Rogers?”

“Phillip?”

“That’s the rumor.”

I accelerated to ninety knots on the climb, and I could see the city spread out beneath us. These first shots would be filmed from the ground, and I searched for my marks. As soon as I found them, I climbed higher and faster, higher and faster, pushing the little plane as far and fast as it would go.

I took the plane into a roll, and even though Hal had been a brave pilot in the war, he held on tight because I’d caught him off guard. I shouted, “Sorry, too fast.”

“That’s okay. Send her into another one.”

I took the plane into another roll, and another. Over my radio, Bud said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing up there?” What I was doing was thinking of Mudge and the time we borrowed the Douglas SBD Dauntless from Santa Monica Airport and went flying over the water. I was thinking of her face, of how happy she’d been, of how she’d wished she could live in the sky.

Hal flicked the radio off. “Let’s give ’em a show, Kit Rogers.”

I sent the plane into a dive. As the plane came out of it, we whooped and hollered, and then I sailed still higher, still faster, climbing again before I sent us into a spin. Together, we ran through every one of my songs from
Home of the Brave
, as I pushed the little plane as far and as fast as it would go.

I flew past my marks, out toward the ocean, and Hal sang louder, his face buried in his knees.

When we were on the ground again, Bud Bowdoin gave us an earful, and afterward Hal took me aside. “I know you’re investigating what happened to her. Have you talked to Ophelia yet? You know she tried to get Barbara fired off the picture for sleeping with Tauby.”

“But that was long ago. Or was it?”

“It may have started long ago, but it’s been off and on for years, at least platonically. As you probably knew, she had a way of attaching herself to father figures, like Tauby and Les Edgar. She said her friendship with Tauby—that’s what she called it—ended when she met Nigel, but I wondered. She certainly saw plenty of him when she was married to Redd.”

I was getting an idea. “Do you mind if we skip dinner tonight? I can blame it on a headache, leave you out of it.”

“Okay by me. Got a hot date you don’t want to break?”

“Something like that. One more thing—did Mudge know anyone named Rebecca?”

“If she did, she never mentioned her to me.”

We were finished by three o’clock. I didn’t bother changing out of my costume because I needed every minute. I asked to borrow one of the airport phones, and called MGM. When the operator answered, I asked for Sam Weldon in the writers building.

His voice came on the line, businesslike, as if he led another life in which he was only courteous and professional. “Sam Weldon here.”

“Pipes here. I wanted to take you up on that dinner.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“I seem to remember making you another offer a while ago.” His voice had warmed.

“Let’s start with dinner.”

Rockhaven Sanitarium hugged the Verdugo Mountains, on the far reaches of the San Gabriel Valley, northeast of Los Angeles. The main house was made of rock, and sat behind an arched iron gate in the midst of tranquil gardens, alive with butterflies and hummingbirds. Statues lined the pathways, which led through twining California oak trees, trunks bent and twisted, and shrubs thick with flowers. The air smelled cleaner here, in the foothills—golden and honeyed—and I felt a twinge of homesickness.

The main building itself was smaller than I’d expected, large enough for only twelve or fourteen patients at a time, but Agnes Richards, the woman who ran Rockhaven, walked the property with me and said they had room for nearly one hundred residents. As if to prove it, she showed me the dozen or so outer buildings, with names like “the Willows” and “the Pines.” The Rose Cottage, where the wealthiest, most famous residents stayed, was a small, red-roofed bungalow with a wide front porch.

Ophelia Lloyd was living there now, renting out the entire cottage. Miss Richards tapped on the door, and when no one answered she consulted her watch. As she looked up at me, the lenses of her glasses caught the glare of the sun. She said, “I believe this time of day you’ll find her strolling the gardens.”

She led me down one garden path after another, now and then passing a nurse in a crisp white uniform or women I assumed were residents, even though they were dressed as if they’d stopped in to tea. We found Miss Lloyd sitting on a bench in the shade, contemplating the azalea bushes. A book lay beside her, unopened.

“You have a visitor, Miss Lloyd.” Miss Richards smiled a patient, matronly smile.

Miss Lloyd looked up, frowned when she saw me, then seemed to remember herself. The movie star manners appeared. “Kit, how lovely to see you.” She held out her hand, then withdrew it before I could touch her. “Thank you, Miss Richards.” It was a polite dismissal, as if she were a queen and Agnes Richards was one of the household servants.

Miss Lloyd looked accusingly at the book, as if it had sneaked up on her, before moving it aside so I could share the bench. “What brings you out to Rockhaven, Kit?”

“I came to ask how you’re doing and see if there’s anything you need.”

“How thoughtful of you.” She looked and sounded bored. I’d expected agitation, a good, old-fashioned case of nerves. Wringing hands and tearstained cheeks, a handkerchief close by. “Thoughtful girl.”

“It’s a pretty place. I can see why you like it here.”

“Who says I like it?”

“I assumed. They said you checked yourself in.”

“Did ‘they’? How nice for them.”

“It seems very—relaxing.”

She stared right at me with large, dark eyes. “I value directness, Kit. In fact, I appreciate it. Why don’t you make your point?”

“I know about Barbara’s affair with your husband.”

“Which one?” She smiled coldly. “A studio wife learns to look the other way. That’s what they call us—‘studio wives.’ I get to be a movie star too, so I’m lucky. Being a studio wife is a job no woman in her right mind would ever sign up for if she knew what it really entailed. Unlike most of them, I actually love my husband. Which only makes it harder.”

“He must love you.”

“He does. But he’s a boy, and boys will play. It never means much. I’m not stupid enough to think otherwise. But he and Barbara Fanning—or should I say Eloise Mudge? Good old Eloise.” She winked. “Now that was something else. At first I thought he might leave me, but she wasn’t that serious about him. I don’t think she wanted him for every day, just now and then, whenever something was going wrong in her life and she needed a daddy figure. She’d snap her fingers, he’d go running, and I might not see him for a week or more. One time it was three. But he always came back.” She sighed as if this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “Let’s face it, girls like that only want what they can’t have.” As an afterthought she added, “May she rest in peace.”

“Is that why you tried to have her fired?”

“Among other reasons. I mainly tried to have her fired because she tried to have Felix Roland fired. She thought she ran the show. They gave her too much power, if you ask me. When I was at Metro, we did what we were told, went where we were supposed to go, and didn’t ask questions. All these actresses now with their demands.” Her nostrils flared.

“She tried to have Mr. Roland fired?”

“You must have known that.” She snorted. “This business with Les Edgar. Dear as he is, he was in over his head on
Home of the Brave
. That picture never would have gotten done if they hadn’t let him go.” Her voice had turned bitter. “No, I didn’t want her working on
Home of the Brave
. I thought it was better for everyone if she didn’t. So I went over Billy’s head to Mayer, who told me to be a good girl, play nice, and he’d make sure to remember it during awards season. ‘Best actress’ sounds so much better than ‘best supporting actress.’”

“Did you hate her?”

“I felt sorry for her.” The bitterness was gone. She was matter-of-fact now. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one elegantly, languidly. “I take it her death wasn’t actually an accident.”