Lone Star (18 page)

“So we three had lunch at this jazz club on the Strip. Chatting, clearing the air, Nell apologizing and saying she had to get on with her life. She wanted no hard feelings.”

“And how did Lydia take it?”

“Well, that was odd, really. At first she was cold, distant. She even made a crack about how chubby Nell is, how she could never be an actress looking like that. Imagine! Then she seemed to just relax. She said it didn’t matter any more. You know what she said? ‘We were really never
friends
, just roommates.’ That was a little hard, I thought, but Nell just nodded, happy to be forgiven.”

None of this was earth-shattering revelation or headline news. Lydia and Nell talk, bold face print.
L.A. Times
. “So they really didn’t iron out differences?” I said, bored. “Just quietly walked away from each other.”

“I suppose so.” I could tell Tansi didn’t like my facile summary.

“Seems unnecessary to me.”

“I mean—it was a bizarre lunch. I felt I was in the middle of a novel.”

The Woman in the Gray Flannel Life.

“Did Lydia talk about the murder?” I interrupted.

“Of course, we all did. But Nell said very little. You know how she told everyone she thought Lydia killed Carisa.”

“And yet you had a delightful lunch?”

“Well, she didn’t
accuse
her at the table. I know Nell was afraid Lydia might have heard what she’d told people, but Lydia never mentioned it.” Tansi quipped, “That would be hard for the digestive system.”

“Truly,” I agreed. “Murder while the ketchup oozes onto the table.”

“Lydia changed at the end, though. Strange. She drank too many cocktails, which I paid for, by the way. Nell and I each had a couple of their famous Manhattans. Lydia kept drinking, and the lunch ended in shambles. I mean, she was the one who brought up the murder, and then she started to sob. But then it was all about Jimmy. And it had nothing to do with Carisa. Once Jimmy entered the conversation, everything was about him. Lydia said she was afraid of Detective Cotton.”

“Why?”

“The way he interrogated her, I guess.”

“Well, is she hiding something?”

“I don’t know. But Nell, I learned, seems to have a crush on Jimmy. It’s charming.”

“So do you.”

Tansi laughed. “Of course, we
all
do, Edna. But I have more of a professional obligation to him. He can be very nice and…” On and on she went. Call it what you will, Tansi Rowland, I thought, but you’re as smitten as a love-starved spinster dreaming of Clark Gable sans undershirt in
It Happened One Night.
Which, admittedly, is not hard to do. I’d been there myself, unexpectedly, sitting in a dark movie theater in New York on a chilly fall afternoon. But that was years back. Now, ancient as dust, I could only recollect, albeit faintly. I was the lifetime spinster, by choice.

“So how did it end?” I wanted to hang up the phone.

“Lydia said she was going home to nap. She was weeping at the end but, well, that was because of Jimmy, not us.”

I considered that the only ones viewing the lunch as salutary were Nell and Tansi. Lydia, perhaps, had a different slant; a woman driven to despair by their words and their presence.

“But I think she’s getting over Jimmy,” Tansi said. Over the phone lines I heard Tansi laugh. “The last thing she said was that he’s as good an ending as any other man.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I took it to mean she was going to forget him.”

***

Yet the Lydia who phoned me later that night was hardly the woman Tansi described. I heard hysteria, sputtering, inarticulate words. At first I had no idea who was calling me, until Lydia, in a moment of lucidity, mentioned that lunch with Tansi and Nell. “We talked of you,” Lydia said, “and Tansi said you were a good friend and I thought of you because I had to call someone.”

“Tansi told you to call me?”

Slurred speech, rambling. “No, she said
she
calls you. You’re always a comfort. Jimmy says he calls you, stops in. He told me. Everybody talks to you. You are the lady novelist.” The epithet made me wince. What was going on here? “And I just dialed the Ambassador, and now you’re on the phone with me.”

My lucky day, I thought. But maybe a good thing. I hadn’t really talked to Lydia Plummer, who seemed somehow to figure in the murder. Friend of Carisa, ex-roommate, inheritor of Carisa’s two boyfriends, Jimmy and Max Kohl. And, more importantly, famously accused of the murder itself—by Nell, charming luncheon companion. Schemes of revenge (maybe with Josh) against Jimmy.

But Lydia made little sense. I waited, hoping for something lucid to emerge, though, as the minutes went by, I despaired of that random morsel. “Would you believe…a part for me…the…only time…Jimmy said he’ll take care of it…and someone…well…just that it was…I don’t care…perhaps you know…do you know…” On and on, drunk, most likely; in a narcotic stupor, maybe. “You know…Carisa was my enemy but…but what really gets me…just think about it…Jimmy leaving
me
.
Me
. Leaving
me
.” She started to scramble the words, then dissolved into sobbing. “Carisa, yes, doomed…a witch you know…but
me
?”

I got tired of the sloppy emotion. “Lydia, perhaps you need rest. Go away. Go back home.”

“Home? I burned those bridges…bridge…Tansi told me to stop blaming Jimmy. But Jimmy
is
to blame…you know…you…behind every bad story in Hollywood sits Jimmy. Carisa told me…”

“What?”

Lydia suddenly seemed to focus. “You know, I thought nobody knew about the letter I wrote to her. All those threats.”

“Jimmy’s letter?”

“I said mean things about her and Jimmy. Nasty. Those lies Carisa spread. I told her to stop it. About Jimmy and his biker friends. Even Max. All the rumors about Jimmy at strange parties in the Valley. Jimmy is
not
like that. I wanted her to leave me and Jimmy alone.”

“
You
sent a letter to Carisa?”

“Max Kohl told me things, and I wanted to hurt…”

“You sent a letter?”

“Carisa kept Jimmy from me. I hated her.”

“Lydia, slow down, please. What letter are you talking about?” I was frantic.

“Nobody knew I sent that letter, and now it makes me look like a killer.”

“What did Detective Cotton say to you?” Another bit Cotton kept from me. So he’d unearthed another missive. What was with this young crowd, firing off letters like verbose Edwardian correspondents? Jimmy’s letter, threatening Carisa; now Lydia’s, threatening. They bed one another down, I thought cynically, and then spend hours writing angry letters to one another.

“How was I supposed to know he found that letter? It was my secret. I told no one. Carisa called me and said…” Her voice trailed off.

“What exactly did you say in that letter?”

“I told you…everything.” She was fading, drowsy, out of steam.

“How was it a threat?”

“I said I’d hurt her…you know…it’s just something you say to scare…”

“What did Cotton tell you?” Obviously more than he told me.

“What?” Out of focus.

“Lydia!”

Silence. A hum. I was listening to a dial tone.

***

The phone woke me up, and I glanced at the clock. One in the morning. Good grief, what was wrong with these people out here? Back East I got my solid eight hours a night, faithfully; a walk in the morning, maybe one at night, rain or shine. And so to bed. I was not myself without the requisite hours.

But at one a.m. the phone needed to be answered. Groggily, “Yes?”

I heard Tansi’s teary voice. “Oh, Edna,” she said, “I know it’s late but I had to tell someone.”

I tried to focus in the dim room. “Tansi, what is it?”

“It’s Lydia. She killed herself this evening. Jake Geyser just woke me up and then I told Nell and she got hysterical and…”

“What happened?”

“It seems Max Kohl found her. He was supposed to meet her in the lobby, but she didn’t answer, so he slipped upstairs when the clerk wasn’t looking, and she was dead. And the police called Warner’s and…”

“So Max was in her room?”

“He called the police. They found drugs.”

“Are they sure it’s a suicide?” I said.

“What?”

“I mean, why did they say it was a suicide?” I thought of my earlier conversation with Lydia. Maybe it was an accidental overdose.

Tansi paused. “I don’t know, Edna. That’s what Jake just told me. He woke me up. Why?” Then, her voice shaky, “Oh my God, Edna, you don’t think…no…it couldn’t be murder.” A deep intake of breath. “Could it?”

Chapter 16

Late the next morning, dropped off at the Burbank studios by my driver, I sensed a shift in the atmosphere on the
Giant
soundstage. A ripple of euphoria. Not that anyone
said
anything, to be sure. There was no uncontrolled laughter, not even a barely suppressed smile. This was the world of illusion—from Rock Hudson who strutted past with Chill Wills and smiled at me, to the woman who offered me coffee and pastry and told me how lovely I looked that morning. For a moment I thought I was imagining it, this hum of bliss that covered the studio like a gentle patina on valued wood. But I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I read human endeavor purposely, and accurately. That was my job, for all the many decades.

And I was sickened by it all. I wanted to get away, even though I had a tedious meeting scheduled with the very people who would feel safe now, secure, the impediment dislodged. Good God.

I’d listened to the radio over breakfast in my rooms, and one of the last news items mentioned the death of Lydia Plummer, Hollywood bit player. Her minor-league credits included the soon-to-be released
Rebel Without a Cause
and the film
Giant
, then finishing production. The announcer remarked that she’d died from a suspected drug overdose. Miss Plummer, he concluded, had died at the Studio Club for Women where Mary Pickford once lived during another era of Hollywood glory.

I wanted to talk about the death. I wanted details. Was Lydia’s death a suicide or an accidental overdose? Or something more ominous? What did Max Kohl have to do with this? He’d been in her room—forbidden in the women’s hotel. What about
his
rumored drug involvement? A needle in the arm? The brutish, powerful Max could easily overpower the zombie-like Lydia, then entering her narcotic heaven. But when I asked George Stevens what he thought, he skirted the subject. So, too, did one of the assistant directors; even the good soul who primed me for the dailies wouldn’t answer.

I tracked down Jimmy, who’d finished a morning of shooting. Dressed as the older Jett Rink, still with the graying temples and dapper-Dan tuxedo, he waved to me, and then was at my side. I waited for him to say something about Lydia, but nothing. I’d have to bring it up, and that made me furious. For God’s sake, what was with these people?

“Come with me,” he said. “Get some coffee.”

Outside, by the gate, was a new car watched by an admiring guard. “My Flat-four 547 Porsche Spyder Speedster,” Jimmy said. “A masterpiece.”

“Jimmy…”

“I’m having ‘Little Bastard’ stenciled on the back.”

“Jimmy!”

“You know, Miss Edna,” he mumbled, a faraway look in his eye, “the only time I feel whole is when I’m racing.”

He’s avoiding the subject, I thought. I sensed something in the eyes, cloudy behind those thick eyeglasses; the awkward movement of his body, the twisting of the head. His own mortality—that, he relishes. Another’s, well, dismissed. I’ll not have that, I told myself. I just won’t. It filled me with rage. So I accepted the invitation, telling him I had to be back to meet Jake and Tansi within the hour. He nodded.

He was explaining the car to me. “I can go 120 miles per hour.” I didn’t listen. I knew nothing of cars. Years back, I’d driven roadsters, clumsy oversized Oldsmobiles and Buicks, especially when I owned my home in Connecticut. Cars were vehicles for getting from A to B, with an occasional side trip to C or D, depending on the richness of this foliage or that gushing mountain waterfall that had to be seen. Other than that, they were instruments of vanity and often folly. But I nodded now, dutifully, as Jimmy gave his enthusiastic oration, all the time running his hands over the steel metallic blue fender, the glistening chrome, the leather so new and supple it seemed just hours from the offering cow.

Over coffee at Hoyt’s Restaurant near Hollywood and Vine, I tried to cut through the dense vehicular verbiage. What fascination do men have with grease and joints and pistons and carburetors?

“Lydia is dead, Jimmy.”

The line stopped him cold, and I saw him bite his lip.

“I know!” he thundered, so loudly that other patrons glanced our way. He leaned into me. “I know.” A whisper.

“Then why is everyone avoiding the subject?” I snarled. “And you, Jimmy, the one she mooned over, despaired over, probably ended her life over.” The last line was cruel, I knew, but I didn’t care.

“I’m not to blame. I was honest with her. She was troubled, Miss Edna. She and Carisa and Max—all the drug users.
That’s
what killed her. Stuff she put in her body.”

“But do you care?”

“Of course, I do. I’m not an animal, for Christ’s sake.”

I couldn’t read him. Despite his words, which I suspected were heartfelt, his wiry, malleable body suggested something else: a cavalier demeanor, even a frivolous one. It was the way he sat, like a schoolboy ready to flee outside to recess; the way he flirted with the waitress, a momentary flicker of the eyelids, even the deprecating nod to an autograph seeker, his name scribbled on a napkin. Yes, he was bothered, genuinely so, but he was also relieved. That’s the word, I realized:
relieved
. Out of danger, the prisoner released from his solitary confinement.

“Jimmy, do you think Detective Cotton will believe Lydia killed herself because of guilt over her killing Carisa?”

His eyes got wide with alarm. “My God, Miss Edna, you have a way of stating things in headline form.”

“I’m always the girl reporter in Appleton, Wisconsin—who, what, where, when.”

“You left out
why
?”

“That I can’t answer yet.”

“Look, Miss Edna. I really didn’t
know
Lydia well. We dated, had a brief affair. So brief, it might only have happened in her imagination. She got
obsessed
with me. Like Carisa. Two women a little unhinged.”

“Jimmy, why do you choose women who are ready to spiral out of control?”

“You know, I think it’s the other way around. They choose
me
. I’m like a magnet. I’m, like, there, and I’m lost myself, and I’m down in the dumps. I’m moody, and they come to me—like I can fill the deep, black hole in their lives. It’s like a paradox. Women seek the men who are the ones they should never go near. You know, like men who are mirror images of their own anguish. That’s me. If I’m at a party, and there’s one girl—sometimes even a guy—who should
never
seek my company, in a half hour they’re up against me, eyes pleading, hands clutching, wanting me. It’s like they’re drowning, and they don’t want to go under alone. So I run away, and they say, there, another man is cruel to me.”

“Jimmy, you could say no the first time they approach you.”

“You miss the point, Miss Edna. I’m at the same party, trying to find someone who will go under with
me
. I don’t want to
drown
alone.”

“All right, all right. But I sense gloating—maybe that’s not the right word here—I sense satisfaction that she’s dead. Nell told everyone, including Detective Cotton, that Lydia was most likely the murderer.”

“Of course she wasn’t. Lydia couldn’t murder. She was so riddled with guilt for everything she did, she’d confess right away to the cops.”

“Or,” I said, flat out, “her guilt made her stick a needle in her arm, choose to die, either accidentally or on purpose.”

Jimmy looked down at his hands, and said nothing.

“I have to go back.” I looked at my watch.

Back on the studio lot, past the gate, Jimmy pulled into a space where, he maintained, he could periodically check on the car. “You have to admit it’s a beauty,” he beamed.

Enough, I thought. Enough.

Josh MacDowell rushed past, a few yards away, his arms filled with costumes. He never looked toward Jimmy and me, but Jimmy, spotting him, rolled his eyes and slunk deeper into the seat.

“You don’t like him,” I said. “And yet you used to be drinking buddies with him.”

“I go out drinking with a lot of folks. Me, who has a low tolerance for alcohol. A couple whiskeys and I’m dancing on a table. But, well, Josh got too familiar.” He turned to face me. “I’m uncomfortable around fem guys like that. I knew Carisa through him, in fact. But you know that. When he drinks, he gets, well, swishier. Is that a word? There’s men, and then there’s men.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

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

“You know, Miss Edna, Carisa used to sleep with dirt bags in the industry—to get small parts. Lots of people do it. You’re gonna hear stories about me. There was this director Rogers Brackett, who I knew here and then in New York. I lived with him, I did things. I had to. Or he did things. You know. That’s how I got on Broadway. It’s what you
do
. Carisa liked to throw that in my face. She used to taunt me. When you’re real famous, it’ll all come out. Or, why are you denying
that
part of your life? I bet you hang out at Café Gale on Sunset, where
they
hang out. Well, I got all kinds of parts to my life. I’m not too sure what I am. You know? I mean…”

“What, Jimmy? Tell me.”

He banged the steering wheel. “Nothing, Miss Edna. Nothing that has to do with nothing. It’s just that Josh and Lydia
talked
about me—to people. And Josh has got his grip on the innocent Sal Mineo, a little boy, who stares at me with puppy eyes and doesn’t understand that Josh is using him.”

“How?”

“How does anyone use anyone else? You find their vulnerability, and then you mine it like precious ore.” He bit his lip. “Miss Edna, I got things inside of me that scare me.”

I touched him on the wrist. “Jimmy, you have to find what makes you happy.” I paused. “And someone to make you happy, no matter
who
it is.”

He looked at me. “What are you telling me?”

“I don’t know much about these things, but I do know that you can’t live your life by someone else’s rules.” I smiled. “But you already
know
that.”

His eyes got wide. “You’re something else, Miss Edna.”

I started to answer, but he shook his head. “No more.” He swung out of the car, opened my door, and walked me to the gate. “I’m going home.”

“You’re not on call?”

“Not today. I gotta meet Tommy and Polly for dinner tonight. They told me to ask you and Mercy.”

“When were you planning on telling me?” I asked, smiling.

“Right about now. Polly’ll call you later.” He waved. “I’m going home to work on the sculpture of your head.”

“You’ll need a lot of clay.”

He smiled. “I’ll need a lot of nerve.”

***

Coffee with Tansi and Jake guaranteed the day would move downward. Both were lively and talkative. I was used to it with Tansi, the resident Warner’s booster child. Tansi’s years in Hollywood, I now believed, had made her a little scatter-brained and twitchy. But Jake, with his crisp manner and supercilious haughtiness, seemed to have caught Tansi’s exuberance. For two people who ostensibly hated each other, they exuded an unpleasant camaraderie when I joined them.

Lydia Plummer. Her shadow paradoxically hung over the day, allowing people suddenly to brighten up. How downright sad! Over and over I recalled my brief, scattered words with her on the phone. It broke my heart.

Of course, the conversation centered on Lydia. Originally Tansi had scheduled the meeting to outline my next few days of meetings, preparatory to my leaving within the week. But Jake had asked to join us. Interesting, this development. A day before Tansi would have been annoyed at his intrusion. Now they were the Bobbsey twins at the seashore. They said all the right things about Lydia: how sad, how tragic.

“Warner is preparing to have her body sent back home,” Jake said.

“To where?”

“Lavonia, Michigan. A mother is there. We’ll plan a little memorial tribute on the lot. She had friends…”

“Frankly, you two, I must say that everyone seems rather
relieved
at her dying.”

“Nonsense.” Tansi glanced over at Jake.

Jake frowned. “Miss Ferber, let me say this. No one wanted to see Lydia Plummer die like that, but she took her own life.”

“How do we know it wasn’t accidental?”

“She was playing with fire. Drugs, Miss Ferber.”

“Or she could have been murdered,” I said, staring at him.

Tansi nodded toward Jake. “I told you Edna thought that a possibility.” She turned back to me. “Jake says that’s absurd.”

“Of course it is,” he crowed. “She killed herself. And the fact of the matter is the whole James Dean thing is over with, Miss Ferber. Odds are she killed Carisa. They’d been friends, they fought, she was angry. Jimmy left her, and she blamed Carisa.”

“So all the strings are conveniently tied.”

“Exactly.” He sat back in his chair, complacent, breezy.

I couldn’t win. Tansi and Jake, two studio lackeys, one admittedly a decent old friend, but myopic, choosing the happy ending. America craves happy endings. In Hollywood even death is a happy ending.

Jake took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Like Jimmy, he smoked king-sized Chesterfields. I hadn’t noticed that. I followed the wisp of smoke across the table and desired one. Tansi noticed me eye the cigarette. “Edna, another one?” She offered me one of her Camels, withdrawing her own pack and sliding it across the table. I shook my head. “Let me try a Chesterfield. That’s what Jimmy smokes.”

Jake wasn’t happy, “Oh no,” he groaned. “Another acolyte.”

“Camels are better for your health,” Tansi insisted, tapping the pack. She pushed it in front of me.

I took one of Jake’s cigarettes, and Tansi lit it for me, striking the match with a flourish. “Tallulah Bankhead has nothing on me,” I said, waving the cigarette dramatically. They laughed, and Jake told me to keep the pack. “Please.”

Tansi placed her cigarettes back into her purse. “I love how Jimmy keeps his pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt with the matches tucked under the cellophane. He forces you to look at that bicep, at the sleeve with the crumpled pack tucked there. Imagine Cary Grant or Charles Boyer doing that. It’s a whole new way of looking like a man…”