Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (55 page)

Belle sorted through the cassettes. “What is it about her, Piper, that you fancy so much?”

Piper took a moment to answer. “She helped my grandmother Ruth through a very hard time.”

“Helped her how?”

“Sybil took her in after the fire. Gave her and my mother a place to stay when they had nowhere to go. Nana was a seamstress in the fifties there at RKO where Sybil worked.”

“They stayed there, next door?”

Piper nodded. “It was a long time ago. My mother was eight. All she could remember about the house was the swimming pool. Nana thought the sun rose and fell on Sybil. Said she was her savior.”

Piper looked out at the pool. It was empty. A trail of wet footprints darkened the concrete and bricks leading to the back door.

“Belle, has she been alone all these years, hiding out?”

“I wouldn’t call living in the Hollywood Hills hiding out exactly. Of course, from the main house we have a different view than from here. And see there, her house sets cockeyed on the corner, so our front entrances aren’t even on the same street.”

“You live next door to her. You must know something about her.”

“She fancies birds. Canaries. Keeps them in the sunroom, there … off the patio. Dr. J tries to imitate them. It’s not a pleasant sound.” Dr. J, short for Dr. Jekyll, was the Vogt’s twelve-year-old Goffin cockatoo.

Piper put her ear to the open window and closed her eyes. Yes, she heard them, a chorus of songbirds.

“Does she go out? Have people in?”

“I don’t know, Piper darling. She keeps to herself and even if she didn’t, I’m not one for coffee-klatches or chitchatting over the fence. Following the lives of tragic former leading ladies is not my bag.”

Belle gathered up a half dozen cassettes. “Where do you want these?”

“On the bookshelf. Where’s Lee?”

“She made her excuses and dashed.”

“Manual labor is not Lee’s bag.”

With Belle’s help, they tucked Piper’s few possessions away in record time. She had taken only personal effects and things recently purchased with her own money. Anything bought with Gordon’s money was Gordon’s. She didn’t want anything of his, only her freedom. Would he try to keep that from her as well?

The guesthouse matched the main Tudor-style house. The polished cherry wood cabinets, window casings, and hardwood floors enhanced the smooth lines of the ivory Kreiss couch and leather club chairs. Belle’s love of feathered creatures was reflected in the hanging prints of exotic birds—cockatoos mostly—and throw pillows covered in a vivid bird-and-bamboo-patterned fabric. A cherry wood screen separated the living area from the bedroom area, which was a Murphy bed on the north wall.

In less than one day, Piper felt more at home here than she’d ever felt in Gordon’s model-home-like house. For her, the comforting smell of old leather and the aged area rug overrode the aseptic odor of fresh paint, granite, and sharp angles. The guesthouse, once an office for Belle’s husband, Mick, was now Piper’s home. House-sitting while the Vogt’s were in Hong Kong gave her a three-month time cushion to get her life together.

Belle brushed her palms together and looked around the studio apartment. “There, I’ve done all I can do. The rest is up to you.”

“Belle, I can’t thank you enough.”

“Nonsense. You’re doing us a favor,” Belle said. “We’ll see you at eight for dinner. Don’t bother to knock. The side door will be open.”

An unexpected wave of dizziness hit Piper. Belle, standing beside her, froze. Just then the floor beneath them came alive, vibrating. She knew instantly what was happening. Any resident of California would know. The metal handles on the built-in cabinets rattled, jingling like a wall of tiny bells. She grasped Belle’s hand in a death grip and stood perfectly still, afraid any movement might make it worse. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. The floor became solid again. The metal handles settled against the wood.

“There, there, Piper, nothing to fear. A teaser.” Belle disengaged her hand from Piper’s and rubbed her fingers. She patted Piper’s hand. “Sneaky buggers, those.”

#

At a quarter past eight, Piper walked across the concrete driveway to join the Vogts and their guests for a small informal dinner party. A late-model car with tinted windows cruised up the street and slowed as it passed the Vogt’s driveway. There were already two cars parked in the driveway and no room for a third. The car accelerated and continued up the hill.

Mick Vogt greeted her at the side door with a big hug, as though she’d come across town instead of across the driveway. Mick was a film producer. Four Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for his last picture had thrust him onto the fast track in the industry. Belle, ten years his senior, the most together person she knew, maintained their relationship like a mechanic maintains a high performance racecar. They were the perfect couple. Piper envied them their solid, twenty-year marriage, made more enviable by the fact that her own second marriage was down the toilet.

“One of your guests looks lost, or they’re searching for a parking space,” Piper said.

“No guests of ours. Everyone is here.”

Belle was telling the story of James Dean and the lovesick jumper when they entered the living room. Rumor had it that in the fifties the Vogt’s English Tudor belonged to a wealthy studio executive whose starlet wife, so distraught by the death of James Dean, dove from a letter on the Hollywood Sign, following Peg Entwistle’s lead some twenty years earlier. The rumor, though never substantiated, was a lively conversation starter at all the Vogt’s parties.

Belle stopped in midsentence. “Here’s our dear friend, Piper.”

A man Piper’s age sat on an overstuffed chair. The unattached male. A flash of eagerness sparked when their eyes met. The floating male was Eric Billing. When he shook her hand, he held on with both hands until Piper pulled it away. Piper silently groaned. She suspected Belle of attempting to match-make, something she wasn’t buying into. Not that she didn’t like men, she did. She hoped to resume a social life someday, but not just yet.

Belle introduced her to Jane Hill and her young lover, Melody, no last name, just Melody. Jane was one of those women who went out of her way to look unattractive, relying on money and professional status to get her young, starlet partners. Her gray, frizzy hair, streaked with yellow, was pulled into a sloppy chignon at the nape of her neck. Her deep red lipstick bled into the creases in her upper lip. White pet hairs stuck to her designer pantsuit.

The first chance she got, she followed Belle into the kitchen. From the large cage in the alcove of the bay window, she heard a deep, rakish chuckle. Dr. Jekyll lifted his claw, bobbed his head, and said, “Nice rack, babe.”

Piper looked down at the low neckline of her blouse and laughed. “You made me look, you dirty bird.”

“Pretty boy,” he said.

“No, not a pretty boy. A dirty bird.”

He chuckled.

Belle laughed and handed her a tray of lobster-stuffed mushroom caps. “He’s just expressing the obvious. You look gorgeous. When I think of all those wasted years with that bloody scoundrel, I want to cry. You deserve so much better than him.”

For years, Piper assumed the Vogt’s had been the ones to distance themselves from her and Gordon. When Piper ran into Belle at an art gallery in Brentwood and told her that she was leaving her husband of five years, Belle had whooped and immediately offered Piper the guesthouse. She also put her in touch with an attorney friend.

“I know you mean well,” Piper said, “but I’m not looking for a love connection. At least not until the bloody scoundrel is out of my life. I meet with the lawyer on Monday.”

“Oh lighten up. I was simply trying for more balance, boys to girls. Four women to one man is a bit much, even for Mick. Anyway, Eric’s not your type.”

She wondered what her type was. Her first husband had exchanged his jockey shorts for lace panties, and her second husband his sheep clothing for a wolf hide. The two couldn’t have been more unalike in every aspect. “Do I have a type?”

“Yes, you just haven’t found him yet.”

At the dinner table, the topic of the trembler earlier that afternoon opened the dinner conversation.

“I’m so used to the ground shaking, I merely assume I’m falling in love again,” said Jane, the producer of women’s documentaries. She slipped a hand under the glass tabletop to squeeze the bare thigh of her female companion.

“Is it earthquake season already?” Mick’s crack got the expected laughs.

Eric Billing, a director of slasher movies, asked what Piper did. She answered quickly, eager to move the topic away from earthquakes.

“Film editing. Freelance, mostly.”

“What projects have you worked on?”

His Nordic good looks reminded her of Gordon and left her cold until she noticed the tiny gap between his two front teeth. A flaw she found charming in this age of perfectly spaced, dazzling white teeth.

“Well, not much … lately. I’ve been out of the loop for awhile.” These people had been discussing current and critically acclaimed projects. Her last noteworthy endeavor had been five years ago—a lifetime in this business.

“Like most film editors, Piper is being modest.” Mick brushed at a black eyebrow. “Having to work in the shadow of egotistical producers, such as myself, they don’t expect much recognition. Before her husband locked her away in the ivory tower, she was, and is, quite a gifted editor. She cut Cromnon’s The Last Clock, and my Devil’s Due. She can spot a dead frame—trimming time is her gift. In fact, Piper will start cutting my documentary as soon as we leave for Hong Kong.”

“Going for another Oscar, Mick? Is this one at least full-length and not a short?” Eric asked.

“An Oscar’s an Oscar.”

“Hong Kong,” Jane said, “So you’ll finally be making Jaded Paradise. I thought you’d take that script to your grave.”

“It’s a go after ten years in development. That’s one I’d love for Piper to cut, but Zimmerman is directing and has his own people, and you know Zimmerman.”

“Mick, I’m honored that you asked me to cut your documentary,” Piper said. “And knowing how much Jaded Paradise means to you, I’m beyond flattered that you’d even consider me on such a great project. Thank you.”

Throughout dinner, the conversation remained on film, projects, and then actors. During dessert, Belle poised her spoon in the air and asked her guests, “Guess what famous star of the silver screen was spotted swimming in her pool in the buff today?”

“Not your neighbor—Silvia … Sybil—Sybil Whatsherface?” Melody asked.

“How soon they forget. She’s only one of the top actresses of her time. Sybil Squire.”

“I thought she was dead,” Melody said. “She was old in The Book of Love.”

“Ancient at forty.” Jane rolled her eyes then touched Melody on the tip of her nose. “Ah, my dear, you are adorable.”

“Lady Squire is eighty-five and very much alive,” Belle said. “Be careful what you say about her. Piper is a devoted fan.”

“Is that so?” Eric’s eyebrows lifted. “I don’t remember much about her except she had some pretty hard knocks. What, six husbands all died tragically, plus her kids. Right? That’s messed up. I heard she chugged Drano or battery acid after her baby boy drowned.”

“A rumor,” Jane said.

“She was institutionalized then,” Eric added. “Shock treatments. Lobotomy. Lobotomies were the deal back then.”

Piper moaned.

“No, sweet boy, you’re confusing her with her daughter,” Jane said.

“Maybe both,” Melody said. “Like mother like daughter.”

“Farmer,” Mick slipped in. “Frances Farmer had the lobotomy.”

Dr. J whistled, barked and then whistled again.

“Didn’t they call her the Black Widow or the Night Widow?” Melody said.

“Platinum Widow. The white hair, y’know.”

Piper gripped her coffee cup tightly in both hands. Rumors. They were only repeating what they’d read in the biographies and gossip columns written by writers famous for twisting and embellishing the truth. Jane was the only one not spewing gossip.

She looked at Jane and asked, “Did you know her?”

Jane nodded. “We were close once. Not intimate close. Just friends.”

“Are you related to Edward Hill?” Edward Hill was the studio head for Transworld Artists, the studio that made Sybil famous.

“He was my father.”

“Then you know all about her.” Piper leaned forward and almost knocked over her water glass.

“We don’t … communicate with each other. Haven’t for many years. She cut me off when she cut herself off from the rest of the world. We’d become close when her daughter went abroad to school.”

After dinner, Piper excused herself. She declined Eric’s offer to walk her to her door and his request to call her. It had been a day of extremes, escaping Gordon, moving into her new safe haven, and not only hearing about her screen idol, but also seeing her.

#

Piper waited until the Vogt’s guests had left before stepping out onto the deck. She couldn’t sleep. The subtle breeze blew across her skin. Exhaustion more than gravity pulled her down into the mesh chair. She drew long and slow on the second of the two cigarettes she allowed herself each day. The city lights blinked below, though her attention was elsewhere. Through the gray-blue smoke, she stared at the house next door. The mausoleum-like structure looked formidable in the shadows of olive and pepper trees, no sounds of music or TV or singing canaries. A single light burned in an upstairs window.

Piper admired the woman’s ability to remain sane in a prison of grief. The same trait she admired in her grandmother. Both women had suffered. Sybil’s grief spanned many years. Nana’s grief came all at once when she lost her husband and two of her three children in a house fire in Orange County.

Piper lifted the faded photograph and gazed at it. A child and two women sat on the side of a swimming pool, skirt hems hiked up above their knees, their bare feet dangling in the water. Piper turned it over. In ink on the back, it read: Maggy, me and Sybil June ’67. Her mother Maggy, Nana Ruth, and Sybil Squire.

A pair of bats dove at the moths circling a porch lantern at the rear of the mansion. For nearly half a century, the actress’s life remained a mystery. Piper wondered what she was doing at this very moment behind those arched windows and ochre-colored stucco walls.