Sheri Cobb South (8 page)

“No, there was someone else in his office.”

“Kathleen!” Frankie’s eyes widened. “Whoever was in Mr. Cohen’s office at that time may have been the one who killed him!”

“Killed him?” Kathleen echoed in alarm. “I thought he died of a heart attack!”

“That’s what they’re saying,” Frankie admitted grudgingly. “That, or a stroke. But I’m not so sure.” She recounted the suspicions she’d voiced to Mitch: the quarrel between the two brothers, the strange odor
,
and the bizarre behavior Arthur Cohen had exhibited just before his collapse.

“Anyway, that’s what this dress is really for,” she concluded. “Mitch and I are going back to the studio tonight to have a look around.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“I don’t know,” Frankie confessed. “I only hope I’ll know it when I see it.”

“You will be careful, won’t you?”

“I promise.”

Having unburdened herself to her roommate, Frankie found it was a relief to have a confidante. When, shortly before nine o’clock, she began the transformation from starlet to cleaning lady, Kathleen was eager to assist, helping fasten the two rows of buttons that held the dress closed in the front and even locating a hair net for confining Frankie’s too-stylish curls. And when nine o’clock came, Kathleen sat with Frankie in the now deserted lounge, listening for the sound of Mitch’s car.

Frankie didn’t invite him in, since the Studio Club had strict rules regarding male visitors, but opened the door as soon as he rang the bell.

“You look ravishing,” he told her, grinning broadly.

“You’re two minutes late,” she scolded, trying not to notice the way his faded blue work shirt strained across his broad shoulders.

 “Sorry about that. Finding a suitable ride took a bit longer than I’d intended.” He led the way to a white van with “Johnson’s Janitorial Service” emblazoned on the side panel, and threw open the passenger door with a flourish. “My lady, your chariot awaits.”

“Where did you get
that
?”

“Let’s just say I borrowed it from a friend of a friend.”

“I see,” said Frankie, scrambling into the passenger seat. “And does this ‘friend’ know it’s missing?”

“Ah, but it won’t be missing by morning.” Mitch slammed the door shut behind her and climbed behind the wheel. “If you’re ready, we’ll be on our way.”

There was almost no traffic at this hour, and they reached the studio in record time.  Mitch drew the van up beside the gate, where the night watchman sat dozing in his shack. When Mitch rapped on the window, the slumberer awoke in mid-snore and opened the gate with the too-eager air of one trying to conceal previous negligence.

“So far, so good,” Mitch muttered once the gate had clanged shut behind them. He pressed his foot to the gas pedal, and soon braked to a stop at the front door of the Monumental Pictures offices.

“Shouldn’t we park somewhere a little less conspicuous?” Frankie wondered aloud. “Maybe behind the building or at least in the shadow of the trees.”

“We don’t want to look suspicious.” Mitch had already jumped down from the van to remove a collection of mops and brooms from the back of the vehicle. “Here, do you want a broom or a mop?”

Frankie took a broom and followed Mitch to the front door, holding it across her chest like a weapon as he picked the lock.

He grinned at her. “You know, it would almost be worth it to get caught, just to see if you’d really use that thing.”

“Just hurry, will you?”

“Whatever you say.”

A moment later they were inside. Mitch clicked on the light in the foyer, and Frankie squinted against the sudden brightness.

“Do you really think that’s wise?”

“We have to act like we have a legitimate reason to be here, remember? I don’t think too many cleaning crews go about their business in the dark.”

They made their way down the hall to Arthur Cohen’s office. Frankie watched over his shoulder as Mitch worked his particular brand of magic on the door, and soon it swung open.

“Why do I get the feeling you didn’t learn that in college?” Frankie asked with mingled disapproval and awe.

Mitch shrugged. “What can I say? I have a well-rounded education.”

He flipped the light switch, and Arthur Cohen’s private office was revealed, sinister in its very normalcy. The two upholstered chairs where they’d sat during their interview still faced the big oak desk, which still looked as square and solid as it had on that day. A shiny black telephone sat at what would have been Mr. Cohen’s right hand, and beside it lay a small leather-bound notebook. An appointment book, perhaps? Frankie reached for it, almost afraid to hope.

“Wait!” Mitch grabbed her wrist.

“What’s the matter?”

“All good cleaning ladies wear rubber gloves to protect their hands.” He dug into the pocket of his pants and produced a pair. “Besides, if the police do decide old Artie was murdered, you don’t want your fingerprints all over his office.”

Seeing the logic of this argument, Frankie made no protest, but tugged the gloves over her fingers. The pages of the little notebook were harder to turn with gloves on, but it didn’t take much to tell her what she needed to know: the book was arranged as a daily calendar, with every page bearing a scrawled combination of names, times, or phone numbers. She flipped to May 12, and ran a finger down the page.  It appeared that Mr. Cohen had had an eleven o’clock appointment with someone named Harold Fountain, and twelve o’clock was simply penciled in “M
.
” Maurice? Frankie wondered.

“Get a move on,” Mitch said impatiently. “We haven’t got all day.”

Frankie closed the notebook and replaced it on the desk.

“Okay, let’s get out of here.” Mitch nudged her in the direction of the door.

“Wait.” Frankie frowned, sniffing the air. “What’s that smell?”

“What smell?”

She sniffed again. “It’s the same thing I smelled earlier, when Mr. Cohen collapsed.”

Mitch took a tentative sniff or two, then followed the source to a metal canister on a shelf behind Arthur Cohen’s massive desk.

“Bingo!”

He pried open the close-fitting lid, and he and Frankie almost knocked heads in their eagerness to peer inside. The canister was slightly less than half full of what appeared to be dried and chopped leaves of a very pungent species.

“What is this?” Mitch asked, digging his hand inside and letting the stuff run through his fingers. “Pipe tobacco?”

“No.” Frankie suddenly remembered the other time she’d smelled that particular odor. She had been standing in the hallway just outside this very office, and then, as now, the smell had made her want to sneeze. “
Achoo
! It’s Mr. Cohen’s—
achoo
!—herbal tea. He drank it for his indigestion, and—oh, gosh! Maurice said that some day he was going to kill himself drinking it!”

“That must have been some job interview you had!”

“I told you, it wasn’t—
achoo
!—an interview—”

“Quiet!” Mitch raised one hand abruptly to silence her.

“Believe me, if I
could
stop sneezing, I—
achoo
!—
would
!”

“Shh! Someone’s coming!” Mitch snapped the lid back on the canister and returned it to the shelf. On the desk blotter, a fine dusting of leaf and stem pieces left a circle of pristine white where the canister had sat.

“Oh, damn!” muttered Mitch.

“Language,” scolded Frankie. She swiped her hand across the blotter, dusting off the herbal detritus as best she could.

A moment later the front door flew open and a voice, magnified by a bullhorn, announced, “Come out with your hands up! We have you surrounded!”

Chapter 7

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Starring James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, and Ann Sheridan

“Don’t shoot!” Squinting against the glaring white beams of two flashlights, Frankie eased herself through the open door and down the three broad, shallow stairs to the ground, hands held over her head as she groped her way down each step with the toe of her shoe. “We’re unarmed.”

As if to test the truth of this statement, a tight-lipped young police officer in a heavily starched blue uniform came forward to frisk her—a procedure that to Mitch, following in her wake, seemed to take an excessively long time.

“And now,” said the policeman, administering a similar treatment to Mitch in a far more perfunctory manner, “suppose you tell me what the pair of you were up to, prowling around studio headquarters after hours.”

The policeman’s badge identified him as Officer Kincaid. Mitch, who had assumed the preponderance of Irish policemen on screen was an invention of Hollywood, put it down as one more instance of art imitating life. “Well, Officer, I guess you’ve heard about what happened to Arthur Cohen today. Say, can I lower my arms already? They’re starting to go numb.” Receiving permission, Mitch flexed his biceps a couple of times before letting his arms drop to his sides. “You see, we were there when it happened. In fact, Miss Foster here was standing so close that old Arthur nearly fell on her.”

“Mm-hmm,” muttered the police officer, scribbling something in a small notebook. “You two work for Johnson’s Janitorial Services?”

Mitch looked puzzled. “No, why?”

The policeman jerked his head in the direction of the van parked nearby.

“Oh, that. I borrowed it from a friend.”

“Is the ‘friend’ aware of that?”

Mitch bristled at the implied accusation. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re getting at. You want his number? You can phone him and ask him yourself.”

“That won’t be necessary—at least, not yet.”

“You’re not going to arrest us, are you?” Frankie pleaded with wide brown eyes. “Daddy is up for re-election this fall, and the scandal could ruin his career.”

“Your father is a politician?”

“No, he’s a judge.”

A fine sheen of perspiration broke out on Officer Kincaid’s forehead. “A judge,” he echoed in a flat voice.

“In the criminal court,” Frankie added helpfully.

The young policeman merely nodded, his thoughts focused on how to extricate himself from a situation that might well prove fatal to his own career. Frankie, seeing his attention was otherwise engaged, saw no reason to burden him with the information that her father’s jurisdiction was almost two thousand miles away.

“Look here,” said Kincaid in conciliatory tones, “I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm, Miss—?”

“Foster. Frances Foster.”

“—Miss Foster, but you really shouldn’t be here. I know you’ve had a terrible shock, so why don’t I escort you home, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

“Hey, wait a minute! I brought Miss Foster here, and I can take her home!” Mitch jabbed his thumb into his chest to emphasize the point.

Kincaid threw a cursory glance at Mitch, then took Frankie tenderly by the arm. “No, I think you’d better return that vehicle to its rightful owner before it’s reported as stolen. Watch your step, Miss Foster. I wouldn’t want you to trip over the curb in the dark.”

Frankie gave Mitch what she thought was a reassuring smile, but received only a glare in return. Miffed, she turned back to the young policeman and bestowed a dazzling smile upon him.

“Your boyfriend appears to be the jealous type,” Kincaid said, opening the passenger door for her.

“My what? Oh, Mitch. He isn’t my boyfriend. He’s just someone I met on the train.” Something, either an innate sense of honesty or a pang of conscience, compelled Frankie to add, “He’s been awfully helpful to me since then, but he seems to have appointed himself my watchdog.”

Mitch and his borrowed van were soon left behind as Kincaid steered the squad car through the gates and onto the road. “So, what gave the two of you the idea to go poking about the studio after closing?”

“It was my idea. I’d been to Monumental Pictures earlier to apply for a job, and I overheard an argument between Mr. Cohen and his brother. He said that Maurice would take over the studio over his dead body.”

“And so you decided it must have been murder. Surely if they knew you’d overheard a death threat, they wouldn’t have offered you a job,” pointed out the policeman, braking to a stop as the traffic light turned red
.

“They didn’t. At least, not then. They, er, didn’t know I was standing in the hall at the time.”

“Eavesdropping, eh?”

“Not on purpose!” Frankie protested hastily.

“Maybe not. Still, people say things alone with their family that they would never say in front of strangers. And in the case of Arthur and Maurice Cohen, it’s well known in Hollywood circles that they fought like cats and dogs, except when one or the other of them was threatened. Then they circled the wagons.”

“Threatened?” echoed Frankie, eyebrows raised.

The light turned green, and Officer Kincaid pressed his foot to the accelerator. “I’m not saying anyone threatened either one of them with bodily harm. But rival studios, bad reviews—” He shrugged. “It’s a stressful life, or so I’ve heard. It’s no wonder he had a stroke. The only real surprise is that he didn’t have one before now.”

“Are they sure it’s a stroke?”

“They’re sure enough. There’s no way to know for sure without an autopsy.”

“Will there be one?”

“Not unless the family requests it.” Seeing Frankie’s eyes light up, he hastened to add, “And why should they? They’re satisfied that Arthur Cohen suffered a stroke.”

Frankie had nothing to say to this, but she thought it very convenient that Maurice Cohen, who had the most to gain by his brother’s death, was also in a position to see that the body was not examined too closely.

“What other family does he have?” she asked at last. “Besides Maurice, I mean.”

“There’s his wife—his widow, I should say—Letitia Lamont.”

“
Letitia Lamont
?” Frankie exclaimed, the producer’s death momentarily forgotten. “The silent film star?”

“That’s the one. You’ve seen her work?”

“When I was a little girl, I saw her in
Knights of the Round Table
. She was so beautiful as Guinevere, and her scenes with Lancelot were so romantic.” She giggled. “I was too young to understand that she was married to King Arthur. He was so much older, I thought he was her father.”