Everything and More

Also by Jacqueline Briskin

Dreams Are Not Enough

Too Much Too Soon

Version_1

Prologue

Book One 1941

Book Two, 1943

Book Three, 1944

Book Four, 1949

Book Five, 1954

Book Six, 1958

Book Seven, 1970

Book Eight, 1972

Epilogue

The gun was jarringly out of place.

This sunlit morning lacked the climate of violence. A breeze fragrant with citrus blossoms rippled through the small Beverly Hills back garden, while from beyond the tall redwood fencing came the peaceful racket of a suburban Sunday: a lawn mower’s roar, toddlers’ shrill cries, the masculine voices of Dodger warm-up coming from transistors—the home team was on a winning streak this June of 1970.

The two women facing each other across the handgun looked more as if they should be lunching together at the Bistro: both were in their early forties, handsome, and obviously well-to-do. One wore slacks with a smartly cut taupe blazer, the other a Chanel blouse and skirt.

There was a small click as the safety catch was released.

“This is all crazy,” said the woman in slacks. Because she had known her attacker for so many years, she ventured a step closer.

“Stop!”

The intended victim halted. As she stared at the muzzle, her disbelieving expression hardened to horror. Her pupils contracted. Then, flexing her knees, she sprang, a clumsy, nonathletic leap, to grip the arm aiming the improbable weapon.

For a long moment that seemed an eternity, the pair remained locked in an outlandish wrestlers’ hold.

The sharp sound rang out like a car backfiring.

One woman slumped to the ground. A heartbeat later, she died in the other’s arms.

That gunshot would echo endlessly in print, on television, in people’s hearts, for these two, together with another woman equally involved, led the sort of lives of which dreams are made. Between them they had vast wealth, beauty, acclaimed talent, triumphant careers, the adoration of famous men. The jealousies and loves, the friendships, the betrayals, the broken promises that formed a twisted path to this lethal moment would initiate hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. A docudrama miniseries starring Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, and Tuesday Weld would win an Emmy. There would be four critically acclaimed books written about the shooting, and Norman Mailer’s
The Golden Girls
would become the runaway best-seller of the year.

In life and in death there was a heady glamour surrounding these three women who had everything—and more.

Senator Robert La Follette often referred to Grover T. Coyne as the greatest criminal of the age. When Theodore Roosevelt spoke of “the malefactors of great wealth,” he aimed the remark at Grover T. Coyne. The name Coyne, in most people’s minds, has always been synonymous with ruthlessness and staggering wealth.

—Grover Coyne, a Biography,
by Horace Soess

GERMAN ARMY INVADES POLAND

—New York Times,
September 1, 1939

The casualties of last night’s raid were dreadful. In almost every block, houses are gone. Yet today Londoners are defiantly gay, the women wearing their smartest spring hats, the men their brightest ties.

—
Edward R. Murrow’s
This Is London,
April 28, 1941

Early this morning Chilton Wace, an employee of Roth’s Haberdashery, 20098 Long Beach Boulevard, Long Beach, was shot by an intruder. He is reported in grave condition at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Long Beach.

—Los Angeles Times,
May 19, 1941

  
1
  

Marylin Wace leaned toward a medicine-cabinet mirror with a triangle broken from the lower-left corner, the only decent-size mirror in the house. She plucked a stray eyebrow with an old loose-screwed nail scissors, and her hand did not falter at the loud bangs that shook the thin door behind her.

“What are you doing, camping in there?” Roy shouted.

Not answering her younger sister, Marylin extracted a hair with her makeshift tweezers.

There was more banging. “I’ll be tardy! Oh, now you’ve done it!” Roy’s panic was comedic exaggeration. “I’m wetting my pants!”

“Won’t be a sec, Roy,” said Marylin, peering at her reflection to ascertain she had a clear arch.

The pronounced widow’s peak of soft, gleaming brown hair and the small cleft of chin gave the face in the mirror a piquant charm. The nose was delicate, the clear skin luminous. Four months short of her seventeenth birthday, Marylin Wace would have been exceptionally pretty if it weren’t for her eyes. The greenish-blue eyes had a depth that stopped her from being china-doll pretty. Without resorting to hyperbole, Marylin was a memorably beautiful girl.

Passing her tongue over Tangee Rose colored lips, she formed a smile that was surprisingly free of narcissism. Marylin lacked even the most timid vanities of adolescence. As far as she was concerned, her beauty was merely a validated passport to enter into the life of each new school. Through the Depression, the Wace family had moved at least three times a year—they moved whenever Chilton
Wace was energized by his wife’s Georgia-accented insistence that he look for a job “a mite more worthy of your talents.” A good-natured hypochondriac with a wide aristocratic forehead and neat features, he relied on his feisty little spouse to make his decisions.

The Waces had been living in Long Beach, California, for nearly five months. Marylin’s looks and gentle, quiet charm had eased her into the right clique at Long Beach Jordan High School.

She licked her finger to smooth both eyebrows. Because she fretted over her lack of height—she was a scant five feet tall—she pulled herself as straight as she could as she emerged.

Roy made a mock bow. “Lovelier than Garbo,” she said sourly, then grinned. “It’s nearly worth wetting your pants over.”

“Oh, you,” said Marylin, affectionately tousling her sister’s vibrant brown hair.