Hollywood Secrets (14 page)

Chapter Ten

Twenty minutes later all four of us were piled into my Jeep – me, Allie and Trace squished together in the front, and Mrs. Rosenblatt taking up the entirety of my miniscule backseat. And then some. (We had to roll the windows down to let her arm-jowls hang out the sides.)

“
Why do they make these cars so small? I swear cars keep shrinking. The Buick Park Avenue. Now that was a good size for a car.”

It was a good size for a small country.

I noticed Trace, on the other hand, didn’t complain in the least about his seating arrangement. Probably due to the fact that Allie’s man-made tatas were shoved up against his person. In fact, I’d swear Trace was even smiling. Allie was definitely smiling. A big toothy thing complete with baby-doll eyes. If she got any cuter, fluffy kittens the world over were going to go on strike.

I averted my eyes, firmly gluing them to the road in front of me instead as I pulled up into the MPTF complex, passing row after row of bungalows that housed Hollywood’s fading stars.

According to the mailboxes lining the street, Ben Carlyle lived in the third from the end, a one-bedroom, beige affair with turquoise trim and shutters. Under the front window hunkered a turquoise window box, a row of bright pink plastic geraniums “planted” in the dirt. A two-foot-tall garden gnome guarded the front door, next to a welcome mat that read,
If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!

The place didn’t exactly scream cold-blooded murderer.

I followed Mrs. Rosenblatt as she led our merry band up the steps to the front porch and rang the bell. From inside I could hear the TV at top volume, canned laughter breaking up the sounds of a sitcom family.

We waited two beats in silence for a sign of non-televised life from within. Nothing. Mrs. Rosenblatt rang the bell again, adding a shave-and-a-haircut knock with her pudgy knuckles.

This time shuffling greeted us a beat later on the other side of the door. It opened a crack, the security chain still firmly in place.

“
Whatcha want?” came a gravelly voice laced with an eighty-year cigarette habit. And, if the wafting from the interior was any indication, a liberal layer of boxed wine.

“
We’re looking for Ben Carlyle,” Mrs. Rosenblatt responded.

“
What fer?”

“
You Ben Carlyle?” she asked, squinting through the door crack.

“
Maybe.”

“
We wanted to ask you a few questions about Jennifer Wilson.”

There was a pause. Then, “Tootsie?”

Mrs. Rosenblatt nodded. “That’s right. Can we come in?”

He thought about this for a second. Then the door shut, the sounds of a chain rattling on the other side, before it popped open again, this time opening wide to reveal the bungalow’s inhabitant in all his splendor.

Ben Carlyle didn’t look a day over a hundred and ten. His ears were big and complemented by a large, hooked nose that covered half of his pointed face. His pale skin was wrinkled into a pretty good imitation of tissue paper, thinly covering a network of blue and purple veins that protruded like little mountain ranges down his neck. Two beady eyes were set behind a pair of smudged bifocals with thick, black frames. (At least Trace wouldn’t have to worry about being recognized. I’d eat my Nikon if this guy could see past the end of his own elongated nose.) He was hunched at the middle, leaning on a walker with two tennis balls stuck on the back feet, and wore a plaid bathrobe over a white T-shirt and slacks that were hiked up to his armpits.

Again, the term “ruthless killer” didn’t quite seem to fit.

“
I guess you might as well come in,” he said, gesturing to a small living room. A chintz sofa and La-Z-Boy chair in 1985 brown corduroy sat in front of a small television showing a rerun of
Mr. Belvedere
. Mr. Carlyle parked himself in the La-Z-Boy. Mrs. Rosenblatt sat on the sofa, Allie scrunching in beside her. Trace and I hung back, standing near the TV.

“
Why you askin’ about Tootsie? No one’s asked about her in ages.”

“
I’m working with the
L.A. Informer
,” Mrs. Rosenblatt explained. “We’re doing a piece on the anniversary of her death and wanted to get some insight from people who knew her.”

I nodded. Not a bad explanation. Close enough to the truth to intrigue her subject, if the way he cocked his head to the side, perking up his Dumbo ears was any indication. But not specific enough to scare him off from a choice quote or two. Mrs. Rosenblatt was catching on quickly.

“
Is it true that you and Tootsie were dating at the time of her death?” Allie asked, pulling a notebook and pen (Pink. Sparkly. Writing in iridescent gel. I knew it.) from her purse.

Carlyle nodded. “That’s right. We were engaged.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

He frowned at me. “Yeah,
really
.”

“
That’s not what I heard,” I said.

“
What did you hear then, girl?” he asked, his tone mocking as if I was too young to have heard anything of consequence. Granted, at his age he probably thought Regis Philbin was a young whipper-snapper.

“
I heard that she was about to break things off when she was murdered,” I said, quoting the info Mrs. Rosenblatt had dug up. At least, I hoped she had dug it up and heard it from her informants in the great beyond.

“
Not true!” he shouted, his face going red, showing off a network of broken capillaries that confirmed my theory of his box-a-day merlot habit. “Categorically not true. Tootsie loved me. I was the sun she revolved around.”

I raised an eyebrow. It was hard to imagine anything beyond a slight eau de denture cream revolving around the shriveled man.

“
I never read anything about the two of you being engaged,” Allie said, pen hovering. “When did you propose?”

He pursed his lips together. “Well, we were
going
to get engaged. I had the ring picked out and everything. I was going to propose on Valentine’s Day but… well, you know what happened to her.”

“
She was shot, wasn’t she?” Mrs. Rosenblatt said.

Carlyle nodded, his eyes staring at a spot on the wall just above the TV, as if lost in some far away thought. “Poor thing,” he whispered.

“
And the murder was never solved?” Mrs. Rosenblatt pressed.

He shook his head. “No. The police questioned everyone. Even me, if you can believe it. But, in the end, they didn’t have anything solid on anybody. This was before all that CSI stuff and DNA, mind you.”

“
Did they have any suspects?” I asked.

He nodded. “Sure. Plenty of those. Tootsie was young, beautiful, successful. That combination always makes for plenty of enemies in Hollywood.”

“
Anyone in particular?”

“
Johnny,” he quickly shot out. Almost too quickly.

“
That would be Johnny Rupert?” Allie clarified, jotting it down in her little notebook.

He nodded. “That’s the guy. He made so many advances toward Tootsie that I lost count. The creep.”

“
I take it the advances were unwanted?” I asked.

“
Of course they were!” he bellowed, his voice matching the TV volume. “She was with me. What would she want with a snake like Johnny?”

I tried to picture Carlyle as the catch he might have been in his heyday. If I tilted my head to the side, squinted until he was blurry and mentally Photoshopped out the bristly hairs growing from his ears, I could almost think of him as appealing.

Almost.

“
Tell me about these advances,” Allie pressed. “What specifically did he do?”

“
Well, I dunno. What do men do when they’re courting a girl? He brought her flowers, candy. Took her to the theater a couple o’ times.”

So far, not exactly homicidal behavior.

“
Sounds like Tootsie didn’t completely discourage these advances,” I observed.

He shrugged. “Tootsie was a sweetheart. I told her she should flat out tell the guy to take a hike, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She said he was harmless.” He paused. Then shook his head. “Poor Tootsie. She was a doll, but she didn’t know much about men.”

“
You don’t think he was so harmless?” I asked.

“
Well he shot her, didn’t he?”

“
You think Johnny killed her?” Allie asked, jotting down notes so fast her pen was a pink blur.

“
The guy was obsessed with her. When it became clear she was in love with me, he must have killed her in a jealous rage,” he said.

It was clear he’d had a few years to formulate a theory. Personally, I thought it wasn’t half bad. I made a mental note to track down more info about this Johnny character.

“
What about Becky Martin?” Mrs. Rosenblatt jumped in. “She was in Tootsie’s last picture, wasn’t she?”

He grinned. “Sure, I remember her. She started out as Tootsie’s assistant. Followed her around the studio lot like a little puppy, feeding on whatever castoffs Tootsie threw her way. She was a second-rate actress and an even worse singer. She’d learned to tap dance as a kid and thought that entitled her to a piece of the Hollywood pie.”

“
I take it you disagreed?” I asked.

He waved me off. “She was nothing. Girls like her were a dime a dozen. They arrived on the buses from the Midwest in droves in those days, all bright-eyed brunettes. Within a week, they were blondes with shorter skirts, stuffed bras and new names, ready to do anything to make it in this town. And I do mean
anything
. No character at all.” He grinned. “Did you know that Becks was originally Rebecca Lubenschwartz.” He chuckled at the thought. “I almost felt sorry for the kid when I heard that.”

“
If she was so second rate, how did she end up landing the role opposite Tootsie?”

He shrugged. “Like I said she started at the bottom, and Tootsie helped her out. At first she was a stand in, then she got a bit part here and there. I was against it, but Tootsie finally convinced me to give Becky a shot at a real role.”

“
And how did she do?” Mrs. Rosenblatt asked.

He shrugged. “She knew her lines. But you’d get more emotion from a trained monkey than you did Becks. She was more wooden than Pinocchio.”

“
I take it you weren’t a fan,” Allie said, her pen furiously taking notes. “Did Tootsie feel the same way?”

“
Tootsie had a heart of gold. She’d help anyone in need.”

I noticed he didn’t actually answer the question. “I heard that Tootsie was seen arguing with Becky the day before her death. Any idea what they argued about?”

He shot me a look, his eyes magnified to three times their real size behind his glasses. “Girl, that was over sixty years ago. How’m I supposed to remember something like that?”

“
Was she jealous of Tootsie?”

“
Who wouldn’t be? Tootsie was perfect.” Carlyle shook his head, again getting that far-off look in his eyes. “What a waste.”

I looked down at my watch. It was nearing 11:30. If we were going to ditch the blonde and the psychic before meeting Trace’s agent, it was time to get this show on the road.

“
Where were you the night she was killed?” I asked, cutting right to the chase.

I leaned in, watching closely for Carlyle’s reaction.

Only he didn’t seem surprised in the least at the question. “Yeah, the police suspected me at the time, too. Always the boyfriend, right?” He sighed. “I was at home. Alone. And before you ask, no, no one could verify my alibi then, and I’m pretty sure sixty years ain’t helped that any. So go ahead and suspect me if you want, but I tell you I loved that girl with all my heart. I wouldn’t have touched a hair on her head.”

He clamped his mouth shut, his eyes going watery behind his thick frames.

We thanked him for his time, leaving him to his reruns and memories as we crammed ourselves back into my Jeep. Once we all got back to the
Informer
offices, we regrouped in the parking lot.

“
So do we believe him?” Allie asked, consulting her notes.

I shrugged. “He seemed more pathetic than dangerous.”

“
But he was awful quick to point the finger at Johnny Rupert,” Mrs. Rosenblatt pointed out. “Kinda suspicious, that.”

I looked down at my cell display. It was a quarter to twelve.

“
Listen, I’d love to stay and chat, but we have to get going.”

“
Where?” Allie pounced.

“
Trace has an appointment.”

“
With who?” Allie persisted.

“
Whom.”

“
What?”

“
The proper grammatical use there is ‘whom,’” I said, doing a bang-up job of avoiding the question, even if I did say so myself.

“
Oh. Sure. I knew that. Well, if you need any help later…”

“
Thanks!” I shouted, ditching her even before she could finish the sentence. Instead, I made a bee-line for my Jeep again, Trace a quick step behind. Once inside, I gunned the engine, making for Nico’s.