“When are you coming back to Hollywood?” I asked.
There was a jostling sound before he came back on the line.
“Just as soon as they extradite me, Kate. I’m in the Pima County Jail.”
I arrived in Tucson late in the day with Pearl and Natalie. We checked into a hotel that allowed dogs, and Natalie stayed with Bernie while Pearl and I went to the Pima County Jail.
When we got to the jail we were told that visiting hours were over. I didn’t have a legitimate badge to press the issue and Pearl had to be back in Hollywood by late the following day, so we decided any discussion with Jack would have to wait.
The next morning we arrived at Gloria Stallings’s house where Natalie and I were given a twelve gauge salute.
“Get off my property now,” Harvey Bishop yelled as he racked his shotgun.
Bernie let out a deep growl. The house was a run-down cinder block affair half an hour from the city, surrounded by rusted cars and piles of rubbish. It’s what Charlie would’ve called a Dirt Bag Shack.
“We just wanna talk to Gloria,” Natalie pleaded, as I restrained Bernie. I was sure that she’d never heard the sound of a twelve gauge being racked. “Then you can go back to livin’ in your shit hole.”
Bishop appeared to be in his sixties. He had a full head of bushy gray hair; mounds of flesh spilled over his belt buckle.
We were looking at three hundred pounds of bad attitude, with an even badder means to back it up. That’s why Pearl had circled behind the house and dropped quietly in behind Bishop.
“You’ve got three seconds to drop the shotgun or we’ll see what a Glock-9 will do to that thick head of yours,” Pearl said.
Bishop lowered the gun, but hesitated at waist level.
Natalie wagged a finger at him. “And, if by some miracle you live, you’ll spend the rest of your life droolin’ and watchin’ the shit bag on your wheelchair fill up.”
The gun hit the ground as I looked at my friend.
Natalie shrugged. “Heard that line in some old movie. Seemed like as good a time as any to use it.”
I picked up the shotgun while restraining Bernie from chewing off Bishop’s beefy leg.
Pearl came around as I slapped one end of my cuffs around Bishop’s wrist and the other end to a railing on the porch.
“You can’t handcuff me,” Bishop protested.
I stared into brown eyes that were almost lost in the hair and fat on his face. “Just did. Sit down, shut up, and we’ll be out of here in a few minutes. Make any trouble and the dog will remove your dick, if he can find it.”
I left Bernie in the yard, giving him the settle command. My big dog took up a position less than ten feet from Bishop, licking his chops as he stared down at the beefy hairball.
We moved to the front door and realized Gloria Stallings had already opened it. After introductions and telling her that we were there about her daughter, Stallings let us inside.
The only thing Gloria Stallings appeared to share with Cassie were her blue eyes, but hers were hollow and lifeless. Mousy reddish blonde hair that came from a bottle crowned an aging face that showed the ravages of alcohol abuse. She looked nothing like the woman from the photograph in the
Hollywood Reporter
from 1983.
“What about Cassie?” Stallings said before we had a chance to sit down.
It was obvious that she had no idea her daughter was dead. There had been a mixture of fear and denial in her voice.
The living room had a dirty flower-print sofa and an assortment of other inexpensive furnishings. I took Stallings by the hand and we moved to the sofa. The next worse thing to losing a child is the death notification about a child to a parent.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, meeting her eyes. “I wish there was some less painful way to say this. Cassie is dead.”
We spent the next hour trying to console what was inconsolable. Gloria Stallings’s mood alternated from hysteria to despondency as we explained what we knew about her daughter’s murder. Between her mood swings we were able to fill in some blanks about her and Cassie’s life.
“After I got pregnant,” Stallings said in a calmer moment, “I wanted out of Hollywood. I didn’t have any means to support Cassie, so she went to live with my sister in Pasadena. She basically raised my daughter before she passed away when Cassie was eighteen.” Sadness again swept over the woman. “We didn’t have much of a relationship.”
“Did you know how Cassie was supporting herself?” Pearl asked.
Stallings shook her head. Pearl looked at us. A silent agreement was sealed. For now, we wouldn’t bring up Cassie Reynolds’s life as a prostitute to her grieving mother.
“Did Cassie ever mention a couple of men she knew, named Maurice Simpson and Roger Diamond?” Natalie asked softly.
“No. I’ve never heard of them.”
Pearl held up the photograph from the
Hollywood Reporter
. “This picture was taken a few months before John Carmichael went missing. At the time he and Conrad Harper were working on a film called,
Days of Destiny
. The movie was never finished. As you probably know, Mr. Carmichael disappeared a few months later.”
Stallings studied the clipping. “I vaguely remember that day ... such a long time ago ... I was pregnant ...” More tears flowed.
“Can you tell us about the relationship John and Mr. Harper shared?” Natalie asked when the tears abated.
“I didn’t see Harper much, but I think he was helping John with financing. John was always looking for partners, trying to scrape together enough money for his projects.” Stalling’s red-rimmed eyes were glassy, distant. “He thought he was going to be famous someday.” She handed the clipping back to Pearl. “What’s this got to do with Cassie?”
“We think there may be a connection between what happened to John Carmichael and Cassie,” I said.
“I don’t understand. What kind of connection?”
Pearl leaned closer to Stallings. There was sympathy in his voice. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. A few months after the photograph was taken, Mr. Carmichael disappeared and was never seen again. Do you have any idea what happened to him?”
Stallings shrugged and found a clean tissue. “I have no idea.” She blew her nose. “Maybe he was murdered or just decided to go away.”
I looked at Pearl, back at Cassie’s mother. “Why would he decide to go away?”
“He was unhappy when I told him I was pregnant.”
“You think he might have disappeared to avoid paying child support?”
“No, I’m sure that wasn’t the reason. I never tried to collect support.”
“You said he might have been murdered. Who do you think would have wanted to harm him?”
A thin smile found her lips. “Besides me, it could have been half a dozen other women.” The smile slipped away. “John was a playboy. He wanted to play the field but not commit to anyone. That was clear to me after I told him that I was pregnant. He said he wanted nothing to do with the baby or with me.”
“Were you angry with him at the time?”
“If you’re asking me if I murdered John, the answer is no. Of course, there was a period when I was angry, but I mostly just wanted to get away. I wanted nothing to do with him ever again.”
I began to feel there was a lot more she wasn’t telling us. “Ms. Stallings, we have reason to believe John Carmichael may have been involved with Conrad Harper and a man named Nathan Kane in importing illegal drugs into the country. Do you know anything about that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember a Mr. Kane.”
I pulled Kane’s mug shot from my purse. She studied the photo as I explained that it was taken over twenty years ago.
“Never saw him before.” She handed the mug back. “All I know is that if John was involved in the drug business, he wasn’t very good at it. He was always broke, trying to scrape together money for rent.”
“Shortly before he disappeared,” I said, “Mr. Carmichael’s secretary said she heard him arguing with a police officer in his office. We have reason to believe his name is Marvin Drake.”
Stallings shook her head again. “I don’t know anything about that. I didn’t go to John’s office or for that matter any of the filming sessions. I don’t think he thought I fit in.”
“Why is that, dear?” Natalie asked.
“His friends were different than me—more interested in the Hollywood scene. I never liked it.” She dabbed her eyes. “John thought I was low class.”
“Did you ever see the actor Wolf Donovan with Mr. Carmichael?” I asked.
Stallings once more shook her head. Her gaze seemed to drift through an invisible window where the memories of the past lived. The tears came again.
After a moment, her thoughts surfaced and she said, “You said you think there’s a connection between what happened to John and Cassie?”
“Were you in contact with Cassie before she died?” I asked, not wanting to answer her question, just yet.
“Not really. I didn’t approve of the Hollywood scene. That city is dangerous and holds nothing but bad memories for me.” She looked at me. “I think Cassie had some ideas about becoming an actress.”
I arched my brows. “Then you did have contact with her?”
She locked eyes with me for an instant, before looking away. “From time to time.”
“Before Cassie died, she told a policeman that she had information about what happened to her father thirty years ago,” Pearl said.
“You mean, John?”
Pearl’s brow furrowed. He looked at me, then back at Stallings and said, “Yes, Ms. Stallings. That’s why we’ve been asking about John Carmichael. As we said earlier we think there may be some connection between his disappearance and Cassie’s death.”
“If she did know something, she never talked to me about it,” Stallings said. “As far as I know, she never thought much about her father. We never really talked about him.”
I ran a hand over my forehead. The air in the dirty little house was warm and stale. I again sensed Stallings knew much more than she was telling us. It was apparent from the way she told her story that she and Cassie had continued to stay in touch, despite her earlier claims that they didn’t have a relationship.
I walked away for a moment. The only redeeming quality to the dirty little house was a series of photographs of Cassie hanging in the hallway. They were taken from childhood until what looked to be when Cassie was in her late teens.
My eyes fixed for a moment on one of the photographs. I noticed for the first time that Cassie’s eyes were blue with flecks of green. They were beautiful, iridescent.
I walked back to the grieving woman. “Ms. Stallings. I’m going to ask you one more time and I want you to tell us everything you know. Do you have any idea what Cassie might have known about the disappearance of her father?”
I watched as her watery eyes lifted and moved to the window. “No”, she said, choking on the word. “I can’t imagine what, if anything, Cassie knew.” Her head slumped forward.
I stepped closer, reached down and moved a hand to her chin. I tilted her head up until our eyes met. “I need you to tell me what you’re holding back. Your daughter deserves that. We want to bring whoever murdered Cassie to justice.”
We held on one another’s eyes for a moment. Her head finally nodded.
“Cassie sent me something. I don’t really know what it’s about or why she sent it.” She stood up, almost losing her balance. “Let me get it.”
Natalie followed her into the bedroom. In a moment they returned with Stallings carrying a large white envelope. She handed it to me. “I only glanced through this once. Nothing in it makes any sense to me.”
While Natalie sat with Stallings on the couch, I cleared a place at the table and dumped out the contents of the envelope.
As Pearl and I sifted through the paperwork we realized it was a list of corporations. Each corporation had a corresponding list of production companies, equipment supply houses, and film studios. Some of the corporations also had account information at various bank branches. The first name on the list was Pacific Trading Partners, formed in 1983 by John Carmichael and Conrad Harper. There were close to thirty corporations in total. The list ended with First World Entertainment and Blue Star Productions, the same corporations we had linked to Roger Diamond and Conrad Harper.
I looked at Pearl. “Smoking gun,” I whispered.
He nodded, pointing at the postmark on the envelope. “Three days before Cassie was murdered.”
I left Pearl with the documents and walked back to where Stallings was seated with Natalie.
I said, “Did Cassie say anything about why she was sending you this information?”
“No. There was just one of those sticky yellow note papers inside, asking me to keep the envelope for her. It said she would pick it up next time she saw me.”
“Did Cassie tell you where she got this information?”
Stallings shook her head.
I was annoyed and made no effort to disguise it. “Why didn’t you tell us about this earlier?”
“I just thought it was information Cassie needed for taxes or something. I didn’t understand anything in the envelope, never really thought about it again until now.”
I didn’t believe her. Cassie had trusted her mother with information that she had to know would put her life in danger. And her mother had initially attempted to conceal that information from us.