The Bette Davis Club (19 page)

Kelsey lied. Georgia
is
here, she’s in Chicago. And this is her room. It must be. My pulse is racing like I imbibed every drink on the menu at Starbucks. Nevertheless, I start poking through Georgia’s possessions the way I did in Palm Springs. I know now what it is I’m looking for. Only this time it’s different. This time I’m not bound by a promise made to a friendly bartender to look but not take. This time whatever I find, I’m taking.

I dig through suitcases and dirty laundry, all of it. But only when I get down on my hands and knees do I glimpse something promising. On the floor, shoved under the bed, is a jumble of old magazines and papers. I pull handfuls of the stuff toward me:
Entertainment Weekly
,
Variety
,
Vanity Fair
. I sift through it all.

I come to a back issue of
People
. Malcolm Belvedere is on the cover, photographed at a film premiere. The headline says, “The Most Powerful Man in Hollywood.”

Generally speaking, I don’t read celebrity magazines. They’re a waste of time, major contributors to the dumbing-down of America. Everybody knows that. Still, the photo of Malcolm is good, flattering. Even someone who’d never met him would think this older man was attractive.

The picture shows Malcolm striding, straight-shouldered, up the red carpet. He’s wearing a gray suit and scarlet tie, and his green eyes sparkle, just as they did the day he and I chatted on the lawn at Malibu. The day The Most Powerful Man in Hollywood handed me a creamy vellum card imprinted with his private phone numbers.

Even though I’m in a hurry, even though I’m kneeling on the floor surrounded by old magazines and an assortment of Georgia’s sexy silk undergarments, I decide to flip through
People
and see if there are any more pictures of Malcolm.

But when I pick up the magazine to examine it more closely, I notice something lying underneath. It’s a black folder, an aged thing with a faded, typewritten label. My brain cannot believe what my eyes are telling it. Here, once again, is the elusive and not-so-innocent script of
An Innocent Lamb
, cowritten by my father, Arthur Just, and America’s greatest filmmaker, Orson Welles.

For a moment, I do nothing. I don’t touch the script, I just stare at it. I wasn’t dreaming when I first discovered it that night in Palm Springs.
An Innocent Lamb
exists, and I’ve found it again.

I can’t believe my good fortune. To find the thing twice!

Then, out in the living room, Tully sneezes. The sound—that explosive, achoo yelling noise some men make when they get off a really good sneeze—is so loud it pierces the quiet of Georgia’s bedroom. It startles me back to reality, and I realize I’ve been gone many minutes. Tully and Kelsey must wonder what’s taking me so long. How much retching can a person do?

I grab at the pile of papers and magazines in front of me, snatching up not only
An Innocent Lamb
, but also a few things underneath it, including the
Spy Team
script. What the hell, I pick up
People
too. In a frenzy—worried I’ve been gone too long, worried Kelsey will come looking for me and I’ll be caught at the instant of my success—I stuff the whole lot into my tote bag, sling it over my shoulder, and get up off the floor.

I dash back out into the hallway. I cross over to the half bath, flush the toilet, run the tap, and wipe my hands on a towel, all in the interest of creating an alibi, of making it look like I spent the last ten minutes throwing up, rather than ransacking Georgia’s room.

I’m so flustered with what I’ve just done, with the value of the item I’ve taken, that I’m breathing heavily. You could say I’m having a mild panic attack. Part of me is amazed that I can now add “cat burglar” to my resume. The other part still expects to encounter the sirens, the screaming household staff, the snarling German shepherd.

I hurry out of the bathroom. I turn to race back to the living room, but I run into someone. My heart gives a wallop. I’ve collided with a large man. He’s not fat, just solid, like a bouncer or bulletproof glass.

He catches me by the elbow and steadies me. “Well, hey,” he says. “You all right?” His voice is husky.

“Yes!” I say. “I was sick to my stomach—quite sick, terribly sick!—but now I’m fine.”

He releases my elbow. “Uh-huh.” He stares at the hand he touched me with. “Think I’ll go wash up.”

“Brilliant! There’s a darling powder room.” I point at the door of the half bath.

“I know. I live here. I’m Boone.”

Boone? Import, export?

“Lovely to meet you,” I say. “I’m Margo, Georgia Illworth’s aunt.”

“Yeah?” He smiles, and his upper lip curls back over his teeth, like a shark. “I guess Georgia’s going to—” He stops himself and glances in the direction of the living room. “I forget,” he finishes.

“Life is just a bowl of scaries!” I say.

Boone goes off to the powder room. I return to the living room where Kelsey and Tully sit together on the sofa, a pair of suitcases parked on the floor next to them. Kelsey holds a scrapbook, pointing at the pictures in it. “Here’s when I was three,” she says. “Topanga Tots Beauty Pageant. I took a Grand Supreme win.”

“Is that good?” Tully says.

“Oh, sure. My mom bawled her eyes out.” She turns the page and touches a photo. “See? I’m wearing the winner’s sash and tiara.”

When he notices me enter the room, Tully rises. He comes over and puts a hand on my upper arm. “You okay?” he says.

My heart is racing from all that just happened—and perhaps, a little, from the commanding feel of Tully’s fingers round my bicep. I try to pull myself together. “I’m fine,” I say.

“Sure?” Tully says.

“You look pale,” Kelsey declares. Her tone is blunt, as if she meant to say, “You look, like, totally dead.” Her mouth slightly open, she stares at me as though trying to figure out how her day went so wrong that she ended up with a middle-aged female invalid standing in her apartment.

“We were starting to kind of worry about you,” Kelsey says. “But then Boone walked in from nowhere, which he does a lot.” She thumps one of the suitcases with the side of her foot. “Bam! Just like that, he’s back from Canada. His allergies are acting up. He’s sneezing all over the place.”

“Yes,” I say, “we met. He—”

“So, anyway,” she says, “when Boone showed up, I guess we sort of forgot about you. Then I got out this old scrapbook, and I don’t know, we really forgot about you.” She laughs, as though amused at her own capacity for indifference.

“Do you want to see a doctor?” Tully says. It takes me a second to realize he’s speaking to me and not, as one might expect, suggesting psychiatric help for Kelsey.

“No,” I say. “I’m all right. Really.”

Slowly, in a gentle way, Tully lets go of my arm.

A few minutes pass, during which Kelsey lies like her precious Berber rug as she repeatedly assures Tully she has no inkling as to Georgia’s whereabouts. In the end, she politely, if stiffly, shows us out. On the way to the front door, she even offers to carry my tote bag—the one containing the script and papers I swiped from Georgia’s room. I decline her offer. If anything, I clutch the bag closer to me.

Kelsey opens the front door. Tully and I step out into the hallway and turn to say good-bye. Kelsey stands in the threshold, chewing on a lock of her long blonde hair. She pulls a hunk of hair out of her mouth and wraps it round her finger. “Tull,” she says, “I’m gonna clue you one last time. Give it up. You and Georgia are so not getting back together.”

There’s a smirk on Kelsey’s face, as though she’s savoring the high-school-like thrill of helping her good chum Georgia dump her boyfriend. “Georgia’s my tightest bud. I know for sure she’s over you.”

Tully seems about to say something in reply, but from inside the apartment, Boone bellows for Kelsey.

“Gotta go,” Kelsey says. She springs backward, closing the door on us.

After Kelsey shuts the door in our faces, Tully and I take the express elevator down to the street.

It’s good to be out in the air. The day is bright, but blustery. We bend our heads into the wind and walk back toward the car.

“That was stupid,” Tully says. “Waste of time.”

“I disagree,” I say. “I found it instructive.”

“How?” Tully says. “Meeting creepy Boone? Hearing Kelsey’s immature take on my relationship with Georgia?”

I hesitate. I wonder if I should tell Tully what I’ve done, wonder if I can trust him. Then again, if I can’t trust Tully, who can I trust?

“I wasn’t sick back there, you know,” I say.

“You mean, you feel better?”

“I mean, I was never ill. When everybody thought I was throwing up in the bathroom, I was snooping round the apartment.”

Tully stops and looks at me like I just knocked over a liquor store. “No way.”

“Way. Not only that, I took something.”

“Jesus! What? The silverware?”

“Better than that.”

And then I tell Tully the story. I tell him how
An Innocent Lamb
was written by Orson Welles and my father, how Georgia took the script and Charlotte wants it back. I also inform him that Kelsey lied; Georgia isn’t gone. Everything I saw in the guest bedroom indicates Georgia is staying with Kelsey and Boone.

Tully whips his head round to look at Kelsey’s building. He starts walking back.

I grab at his jacket to stop him. “No! You mustn’t!”

“Why not?” he says. “I’ll get Kelsey to tell me the truth.”

“You won’t,” I say. “She’s probably on the phone right now, warning Georgia that we came by. Warning her to stay away. Plus, I don’t like the look of that Boone.”

“Then what the hell do we do?”

“You tell me,” I say. I let go of his jacket and smooth the sleeve. “You’re the one with the extreme intelligence.”

“The what?”

“Charlotte says you have a high IQ.”

Tully laughs. “You’re kidding. I have some smarts, I guess. Like anybody. Not hard if you pick up a book once in a while.”

“But why would Charlotte make up something like that?” I say.

Tully heaves a sigh. “She thinks I’m wasting my time writing nonfiction. She wants me to churn out screenplays. If Charlotte’s going around telling people I’m a genius, it’s because she hopes it will impress them, or because she’s trying to impress herself. And because—”

“In her world, who could tell?”

“Right. Nobody would ever challenge it.”

“Please,” I say, “let’s go to the car.”

We begin walking, and I again ask Tully what he wants to do. Should we stake out Kelsey and Boone’s apartment and wait for Georgia to show up?

Tully, still walking, gazes up at the surrounding skyscrapers. “You’re probably right,” he says. “Kelsey will tip off Georgia. Which means Georgia won’t come back here for who knows how long. I vote we take a break. As long as we’re in Chicago, I should visit the Museum of Science and Industry.”

We reach the MG. Tully opens the passenger door and stands there, holding it for me. “You want to come along?” he says. “Have lunch?”

“I don’t understand,” I say. “You think Georgia’s at a museum?”

“I doubt Georgia’s ever been to a museum,” Tully says. “I’m not sure she’d see the point.” He adjusts his glasses. “No, I want to go to the museum because it has a dollhouse I need to see.”