American Blonde (35 page)

And then I saw it.

It was sitting in plain sight, atop a little table by the door, as if she’d set it down quickly, on her way out. A simple ring—gold band, black square face, crescent moon, seven stars, a dove, a lily, and an R and D entwined.

T
he afternoon paper carried Zed Zabel’s column, where he told “the truth about Johnny Clay Hart,” recounting sordid stories from my brother’s past, most of them made up. The ones that weren’t made up were exaggerated to make Johnny Clay seem wild and dangerous. There was no telling how many newspapers the story had reached. From a Beverly Hills pay phone, I called the Dunbar Hotel and asked for Butch. When he came on the line I said, “Has he seen the paper?”

“Not yet. What’s in it?”

I read him the article.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Keep him away from them if you can. The last thing we need is for him to go after Zed Zabel and do the same to him that he did to Blackeye, even though both those men deserve whatever they get.”

“Done. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to stir up the hive.”

The living room of Mudge’s house was stacked, floor to ceiling, with books because Helen and Flora were searching for things Mudge might have filed away. The sofa was so covered in pages you could barely see the pattern. Letters, newspaper clippings, notes, receipts, photos—years of material, years of a life.

Helen cleared the papers off one of the chairs so I could sit, and then she cleared a spot for herself and Flora on the couch. “How’s your brother taking it?” She nodded at the newspaper.

“He hasn’t seen it yet. I asked Butch to keep him away from it until I can figure this out.”

“Wise idea. So Babe King.”

“Babe King.”

“Not Nigel at all.”

“No. Although I’d bet the studio thinks he did it. Why else would they go to so much trouble? Babe isn’t worth anything to them yet.”

“I don’t understand what the motive is. I have a sister I’m not especially close to, but I wouldn’t wish anything bad for her.”

Flora shook her head. “Poor child,” she said, and I knew she was talking about Mudge.

I thought of my own sister, of how many times over the years I’d prayed for her to disappear or leave me alone or suddenly turn nice. “I wouldn’t wish anything bad for Sweet Fern either. You haven’t found anything in all these papers?”

“Just more things to be properly filed and put away.”

I looked at the framed picture of Mudge that sat on the mantel. She smiled, her secrets safely kept.

Helen said, “Without the flask, there’s no proof. There’s nothing to tie her to the crime.”

“Unless there’s a way to stir the hive and get the bee to come after me.” She and Flora looked at each other and back at me, lost. “I need you to keep going through these books. Search every book in this house, until you find something that can help me.”

Flora said, “What are we looking for?”

“Anything relating to Edna Mudge or Babe King or a boy named John Henry Briggs.”

Giffard Leland lived in a pink stucco mansion high up in the Bel Air hills, a gift from his father, the grocery store king. The property was terraced and statued within an inch of its life, as if to say,
We’re every bit as rich as you are and we belong here too.

It was two o’clock on Wednesday, February 19, and I had an appointment. A maid in a black uniform met me at the door, her smile as wilted as her apron. Yilla King tripped in from the wings, as if she’d been waiting for her cue. Her bright yellow hair shimmered. The pink-orange of her lips and nails matched her blouse perfectly.

“Kit Rogers, how charming,” she said, kissing me on both cheeks. She ordered drinks for us from the maid and then led me through a maze of rooms, hands flapping as she pointed out this and that. We wound up on the sunporch, where magazines were spread across the love seat. She had clearly been catching up on her reading.

She plucked a cigarette from a bowl of them arranged like flowers, but didn’t offer me one. “What can I do you for?” She sat, swinging one leg over the other, shoes a glittering gold under the cuff of her trousers. I sat across from her and it hit me for the first time that this too-bright, too-loud woman was Mudge’s mother. The same mother who had dropped a three-year-old girl and a baby at an orphanage, and then come to collect them and drop them off, again and again, until they were old enough to leave on their own. As far as I was concerned, Yilla was as guilty of killing Mudge as Babe was.

I said, “It’s about Edna.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your daughter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do. Edna Mudge. Babe King.” Her leg stopped swinging. “I guess in a way it’s about Eloise too.” I opened my bag and pulled out a folder. On the table between us, I placed copies of the detective agency letter, the newspaper article featuring the Dell Rapids orphanage, and the picture of John Henry Briggs.

Yilla stared at them, eyes wide and unblinking.

The maid walked in then, setting drinks down in front of us, glancing as she did at the materials I’d laid out. Yilla shooed her away and picked up her drink. She took a dainty sip, and then downed half of it. She set the glass on the table with a bang, little drops of water splashing onto the papers.

I said, “I found these when I was going through Eloise’s things. Take your time.”

She kept her eyes on me, as if she was afraid to look down. “What do you want?”

“I want you to tell me about this boy.” I leaned forward and tapped the picture. “I’ll get you started. He’s Edna’s son. Your grandson. Eloise was interested in him enough to pay a private investigator to find him. I’m wondering why.”

She swallowed the rest of her drink. This time, her hand trembled as she set the glass down. She sat staring at the floor.

I continued to help her out. “I guess it wouldn’t look good for a popular young movie star to have a secret past and to have abandoned her own child, much less shaving a good ten or eleven years off her age. I don’t think the studio would be very pleased about that. Especially a studio like MGM, which believes in family and happy endings.”

She lit another cigarette, both hands shaking so badly that I took the lighter from her and helped her. She sat back. Finally, she let out a breath. “She didn’t want anyone to know about it. She stashed the kid somewhere up north, faked her own death, ran away from the father. He was no good anyway.” She sniffed, picked at her lip, inhaled deeply. She glanced at the picture, then away quickly, as if it might burn her eyes. “Eloise knew there was a child because when it happened, back when she got knocked up, Edna asked to come live with her out here. She was just a stupid, mixed-up kid, but Eloise didn’t want anything to do with her. Eloise always had it in her mind that her sister stole that man from her, as if anyone would want him. Like I said, he was no good. Common, you know. But Eloise was cold that way. Same way she was with me. Coming out here, too big for her britches, making all that money. Do you know she kept me on a budget? Tried to tell me what I could spend it on and where.”

“She supported you?”

“If you could call it that.”

“It was her money.”

“I was her mother.”

A picture was beginning to form. “And when she cut you off, you pushed Edna into pictures, hoping she would take care of you instead.”

She laughed, a hard, brittle sound. “No one ever pushed Edna to do anything. Anything she ever did she did on her own and for herself, and she’s the first to tell you. She turned out to be as ungrateful as her sister.”

“So when Edna knew she was pregnant, why didn’t she turn to you instead?” As if I had to ask.

“I was married by then and living out of state. Husband number three wasn’t interested in raising someone else’s kids, if you know what I mean. And who could blame him? Troublemakers, both of them. Eloise phoned me up and read me the riot act, said I needed to get my act together and go get Edna and grow up once and for all.” Her eyes flashed. “Me, her own mother!”

“Why did Eloise go to so much trouble to find him?”

She leaned forward, stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray. “She tracked him down through that private eye. Told Edna to stay away from her studio, go back to Columbia, leave her alone, or she would tell Mr. Mayer and Louella Parsons and the
New York Goddamn Times
, anyone who would listen. It was blackmail. ‘You stay over there, I stay over here, everyone’s happy.’ Only Columbia is a shithole; everybody knows that. Edna wanted more for herself. She always did. This was her dream.” She waved her hands at the house, the city. “Eloise stole it right out from under her nose.”

“And so you helped Edna, hoping she would help you. You pretended she was ten years younger, just a fresh up-and-comer who needed her mother as a chaperone.”

She smiled. “It worked didn’t it?”

It was too much, all of it. Poor Eloise. Poor Edna. This awful mother.

“Until now.” I looked around at the sunporch and the statued gardens that spread beyond. “It is a beautiful house. I meant to congratulate you on your marriage. Your husband’s a well-known, respected man. It must be a dream come true for you and for Edna. This house, your marriage, her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.”

“What do you want?” she said again.

“The same thing Eloise wanted: blackmail. I want you to tell Edna that I know about John Henry Briggs.”

I waited just long enough to make sure this had sunk in, and then I stood and collected my purse. As she stared down at the papers spread across the table, I said, “Don’t worry. You can keep those. I made them for you.”

And so, I waited.

I waited for Yilla to deliver my message and for Babe to get in touch with me.

I waited for Babe’s next move.

On Thursday, I drove to the studio and went to my classes like a good, dutiful MGM girl, and pretended I wasn’t waiting for anything. Rosie said, “You seem distracted, Velva Jean.”

I said, “There’s a lot on my mind. Ever since my brother was picked up by police. Did you read about it? And Zed Zabel’s article too?” He nodded. “And then the suspension—1947 has been a really horrible year.” It was an easy, believable excuse.

He gave me a pep talk, which made me feel worse about lying, and then, as if to make up for it, I sang him the song I’d written and told him I’d recorded it the week before. “I should get a copy soon,” I said. “When I do I’ll bring it in and play it for you.”