Mildred Pierced (10 page)

“You, my agent, and I agree, but I considered it a victory of sorts when Bette Davis was turned down for the role after telling everyone it was hers.”

I knew Anita also liked Bette Davis, but I knew Anita was smart enough not to say the wrong thing such as mentioning that Davis later won an Academy Award for playing another Southern belle, the lead in
Jezebel.

“What’s your next movie?” Anita asked. “You don’t mind?”

“I play a housewife who loses her husband, has to raise her daughter by becoming a waitress, and winds up owning a string of restaurants.”

“You’re not kidding?”

“No,” said Crawford.

Some new customers arrived but didn’t come to the counter. The coffee seemed to be helping my headache. I looked at my father’s watch. Don’t ask me why. Habit. Memory sought. According to the watch, it was ten after one. I knew it was off by at least three hours.

We finished, and I dropped a dollar on the counter.

“I read about Shelly,” Anita said, glancing at Crawford.

“It’s all right, Anita,” I said. “Miss Crawford knows all about it. She’s helping me try to clear him.”

Anita looked confused. It wasn’t a good time to enlighten her. I told her I’d call her later.

Crawford reached her hand over the counter and Anita took it.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you,” Crawford said.

Anita simply smiled.

When we were back in the car, Crawford said, “Did you just use me to impress your lady friend?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Good,” said Crawford. “I like her. And now?”

“Lincoln Park,” I said, stepping on the gas.

I parked in the lot off Alhambra as close as we could get to the path Crawford said she had taken. We walked past the eucalyptus-shaded picnic grounds, made a turn at the end of the six-acre lake, passed the merry-go-round, children’s playground, the four horseshoe courts and the conservatory of rare tropical plants.

We walked past benches and bushes along the path and made a turn. To our right about a hundred yards away, I could see the tennis courts.

“There,” she said, stopping and pointing into the grassy field. There were a few trees, heavy with leaves growing randomly in the field.

“Show me where you were standing,” I said.

“Right here,” she said.

“And Shelly?”

“Approximately twenty-seven feet in that direction perpendicular to that tree and my hand,” she said.

“Twenty-seven feet?” I asked.

“I’ve been studying camera distances for more than twenty years,” she said. “I spent my free hours watching movies being made, watching feet being counted off, lights being adjusted, marks being set. Twenty-seven feet, give or take a few inches.”

“Let’s go.”

She led the way to the spot, and I asked her where the target had been and where Mildred had been standing.

“She was moving when he shot her,” Crawford said.

“Toward him?”

“Yes.”

I looked around. To the left of the path behind us was a growth of bushes. Someone could have been in those bushes. Someone could have waited for a witness and then, when Shelly fired, he or she could have fired, too—not at the target but at Mildred.

“How big would you say this field is?” I asked, looking around.

“About sixty yards square, more or less,” she said. “Why?”

“Let’s look for a bolt,” I said.

“Mr. Peters, I fail—”

“If someone else shot Mildred when Shelly fired, then somewhere in this field is the bolt Shelly shot.”

“What if he fired more than one?”

“He said he only fired the one.”

“Where do we look?” she asked.

“The logical place would be beyond the target or near where Mildred died. But given the fact that we are talking about the man for whom the word ‘myopia’ falls far short of reality, it could be anywhere.”

“Or it could be nowhere. There might not be another bolt.”

“Might not,” I said.

We started to look. About fifteen minutes into the search, a skinny redheaded kid on a bicycle came up the path.

“Stop,” I called out to him.

He started to go faster.

I flipped open my wallet with my private detective’s license, which he couldn’t see even if he were looking at us. “Police,” I shouted.

He came to a slow, reluctant stop on the path and called, “You lose something?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Is it worth anything? Like a watch, a ring, money, you know?”

“Help us look, and, if you find it, I’ll give you a buck.”

The kid laid his bike on the edge of the path and came running toward us. He was about sixteen or seventeen, with his pants legs rolled up. His short-sleeved shirt had horizontal blue-and-white stripes. He nodded at Crawford, who nodded back. The kid was definitely not a fan of Joan Crawford movies.

“What are we lookin’ for?” the kid asked.

“A piece of metal about this long, shaped sort of like an arrow. If you find it, don’t touch it. Just leave it there.”

“I’ve only got a few minutes,” he said, starting to search. “I’ve got to get back to school.”

“You come this way every day?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” he said. “I’ve got an early lunch period. I bike home.”

“You were here two days ago when the woman died?”

“I guess.” He avoided my eyes.

“You tried to help.”

“I guess.”

“The fat little man with the thick glasses told you he thought the woman had a heart attack, right?”

“Yeah, but there was blood and everything. He started crying.”

The kid shrugged and added, “She was dead. There wasn’t anything for me to do here, and I didn’t want to miss school.”

“I’ll write you a note. I need your name and address.” I took out my pad. “And your phone number.”

He said his name was Scott Kaye, and he told me his address and phone number.

We continued searching.

Ten minutes later, my back in pain, my head hurting, the kid found it. He pointed down at the trophy and grinned.

“You owe me a buck,” he said.

I pulled a dollar bill from my wallet and gave it to him. He ran for his bike. The bolt was twenty yards left and about thirty yards beyond where Shelly had set up his target. Crawford joined me, and we both looked down at it.

I took out my almost-clean handkerchief, picked up the bolt, and put it in my jacket pocket.

“You’re going to take it to the police?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“They won’t believe you. They’ll say you’re lying to save your friend.”

“You’re here with me,” I said.

“I’ve been in enough mysteries to know that they’ll simply claim you planted that bolt there and got me to come out with you till we found it.”

“You have a devious mind, lady.”

“I need it to survive in my business,” she said.

“Well, they can check it for Shelly’s prints. It convinces me that Shelly didn’t do it.”

“You could be wrong,” she said.

“It’s happened.”

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now I find the real murderer of Mildred Minck.”

“Now
we
find the real murderer of Mildred Minck,” Crawford said. “And we do it before I have to make an appearance in court on Tuesday.”

As it turned out, the arraignment of Shelly Minck was rescheduled for Thursday so that he could attend Mildred’s funeral.

But that wasn’t the only funeral I would attend in the next few days.

M
Y SISTER-IN-LAW
R
UTH
died the night Joan Crawford and I and the kid found the bolt from the crossbow in Lincoln Park.

I found out about Ruth after I had dropped Crawford off at her home and made it to Mrs. Plaut’s just in time for dinner.

Gunther was waiting for me on the porch. He and Mrs. Plaut had been sitting on the porch swing. When I came up the concrete path, they both stood. I could tell someone had died. I wasn’t sure who, but I had a good idea.

“Ruth?” I asked.

Gunther nodded.

Mrs. Plaut handed me a platter covered with waxed paper and said, “An egg and artichoke casserole. It serves five.”

I took the platter. It was still warm.

“You are to go to your brother’s house,” said Gunther. “And, if you wish, I would like to accompany you.”

“Come on,” I said.

Mrs. Plaut waved good-bye to us.

We didn’t talk as we went over the hills toward North Hollywood. Gunther sat with the casserole in his lap. I turned on the radio. We heard the end of the Cab Calloway Show and all of
Abie’s Irish Rose
before we pulled up to the house.

Casserole in hand, Gunther at my side, I walked up to the door and knocked. Ruth’s sister Becky, a healthy, older version of my dead sister-in-law, opened the door. Her eyes were red, but she smiled when she saw me and said “thank you” when I handed her Mrs. Plaut’s casserole.

The afternoon went slowly. Visitors were in and out, bringing food and condolences. Phil shook hands, accepting sympathy; the boys, Nate and Dave, were solemn, mimicking their father. Lucy, my four-year-old niece, was playing at a neighbor’s.

There wasn’t much to say, and not much was said for the four hours I spent mostly watching my silent brother, whose hands clenched and unclenched from time to time, wanting to strike out at someone or something.

It was a long four hours.

The funeral was the next day, Sunday. Phil wanted it done quickly, tastefully, and small. And that’s what it was, because many of the people who might have wanted to come simply didn’t have time to make it.

At the small storefront funeral home on Pico, Phil sat in the front row with Lucy on his lap. She had a stuffed Mighty Mouse in her arms and was gently touching its stitched-on eyes and paying no attention to what was going on around her. My nephews—Nate, who was almost fourteen, and Dave, who was ten—sat between Phil and me. The boys wore suits and ties and looked solemn and blank faced. Becky sat in the row in front of us. Ruth had no other siblings, and both of Becky and Ruth’s parents were dead.

Most of the people in the small room sitting in front of the covered coffin were cops, a few were Ruth’s relatives, and there were some mutual friends, including Jeremy and his wife Alice, Gunther, Mrs. Plaut, Anita, and Violet.

The doctors had been treating Ruth for three years, and she had just kept fading away, a different diagnosis pronounced by each specialist. Phil had refused an autopsy. He didn’t care what had killed his wife. He cared only that she was dead.

Phil owned a funeral plot in a cemetery in Glendale. It was a few hundred yards from where our father and mother were buried. Phil’s former partner, Steve Seidman, had handled the funeral arrangements, pulled strings, called in favors to get everything done quickly.

There was a shiny boxlike podium of dark wood on the platform behind the coffin. Since my brother and his family attended no synagogue or church, he wanted no last-minute pieced-together generic eulogy by a clergyman of any cloth. Jeremy said he would be happy to read a poem. Phil asked Becky to say a few words and did the same with Nate, telling him only if he wanted to.

Phil started the funeral service by saying only, “Thanks for coming. My wife, the mother of my children, the sister of Becky, the friend of all of you here, is gone. I don’t know where she went. Not in that box. She spent a long time dying and too short a time living. She left a note.”

He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and took a very deep breath. His hand automatically went up to his tie to loosen it as he did every working day. But he stopped himself, unfolded the sheet, and read:

“Phil, David, Nate and Lucy. Love each other as I have loved you. Live and make me proud of you. Grieve, but not too long. Remember me, but not with sadness.”

Phil folded the sheet and returned it to his pocket. He looked down at the podium and placed both palms flat on it.

“That’s it,” he said. His voice didn’t break, but it came close.

Becky and Nate spoke briefly, both saying they would miss her, that she was a good wife, sister and mother, and that she would be remembered.

Jeremy said he would like to read his poem at the cemetery and since Phil had no plans to speak at the burial, he agreed.

The sun was shining in the small cemetery in Glendale. We huddled around the casket which was perched on two low wooden sawhorses next to the open hole.

Jeremy, massive in a suit and tie, which I had never before seen him wear, moved to the podium and said, “This is ‘A Melody for Ruth.’”

And then he read:

There is no end but death.

We look for start, middle and end

To give our lives a diameter,

Controllable limits that send

Us a feeling of security

Suggesting an order

That may not be there.

If there is a border,

We create it; and sense

Is just a matter

Of which story we sing

And whose song

You remember the melody of.

And we know the truth.

We will remember the Song of Ruth.

When the casket was covered, I told Phil that I’d come over to the house later. Lucy clung to his neck, asleep.

Forest Lawn Cemetery was also in Glendale, just a few miles from the small cemetery where Ruth was now buried, a few miles in distance but in another dimension.

Forest Lawn is 303 acres of smooth green lawn with no tombstones—just bronze tablets. It does have mausoleums for the famous and wealthy who want and can afford them. Forest Lawn is surrounded by the world’s largest wrought-iron fence and gate. The $4,500,000 mausoleum-columbarium, inspired by the Camposanto in Genoa, rises in terraces not far from Babyland, where only infants are buried. Buried or sealed in Forest Lawn are, among thousands of others: Jean Harlow in a chamber purchased by William Powell, Tom Mix and John Gilbert. Irving Grant Thalberg is inside a private mausoleum, and Lon Chaney is buried in an unmarked grave because too many fans visited and trampled the ground.