Show Business Kills (45 page)

Tampons, hair spray, lozenges.
Jobs
. A vent brush, a blusher brush, a tube of lipstick in a color she no longer wore.
Receptionist. Proofreader. Nanny
. That’s what those words meant that someone had written next to all of their names on the list. Jobs. An empty bottle from
an old prescription of an antibiotic, prescribed by Dr. Andrew Schiff-man. She tossed it into the wastebasket. A bottle of
her cologne. Norell.

Betty Norell. The name hit her, and when it did, so did a lot of other thoughts that rushed at her like an oncoming train.
Chichester. If only it were open all year round, I’d never leave the place
. That’s what Randy McVey said in the meeting. Chichester was the theater started by Olivier, and Rose said that’s where Betty
Norell worked in the winter.

She put the cologne bottle down on the counter and walked into the office, where the others were taping the last few boxes.
“Who remembers what it said on that list? The one Rita Connelly had with all of our names on it.”

“Names and home addresses,” Marly said.

“And some other words that somebody wrote on it,” Rose said, “like nanny, and…

Jobs. Proofreader. Receptionist
. “The list was made by Betty Norell,” Ellen said. “She thought she’d come here and one of us would give her a job. Next to
Rose is where it said proofreader, next to me it said receptionist… and Jan… next to Jan it said nanny.” She was pale and
fearful.
“What did Jack Solomon say the other night about her?” she asked.

“Oh, some long story about how her daughter was searching for her and he was such a good guy he took her call, even though
he was in a meeting with God or somebody like that,” Rose said.

Greenie looked up from the last box. “That name sounds familiar,” he said. “Betty Norell.” He was processing the name. “Is
that someone you know?” he asked and shuffled through the box he’d been about to close. “She sent you a video ages ago,” he
said to Ellen. “No,” he sighed. “It’s not in here.”

“What kind of video?” Ellen asked.

“You know, like all those kooks out there who send in their home tapes, all those people out there who read articles about
you and think you can make them a star. I just figured she was one of those, so I put it in the cupboard with all the rest
of them. I had no idea you knew her. I mean, I think in her note she said something like, ‘Hi, Ellen. Take a look at this
and let me know if you have a part for me.’ But they all say that, try to sound so chummy. In fact, now that I think about
it, I think she may have even called here, but wouldn’t say what she wanted, so I didn’t put her through. I mean, you get
dozens of calls like that a week.”

“Can you put your hands on the video?” Ellen asked.

“Maybe,” Greenie said and tore the tape from one of the sealed boxes. “Who is she?”

“She was the best actress in our class at Tech,” Marly said.

“Betty Norell shot Janny,” Ellen said, sitting because she didn’t think her legs could hold her any more. And then she put
it all together for them, all the thoughts that were rushing
around in her mind. She collected them and then blurted them all out. Starting with the fact that the list the police found
in Jan’s front hall had jobs next to each of their names. It was faxed to San Diego, where Betty Norell lived, to someone
who said she was Rose but had a voice that sounded like Suzanne Pleshette. A voice that was so deep Maria could have mistaken
it for a man’s voice.

“But I thought Betty Norell spent winters in repertory in England,” Rose said. “At the theater started by Olivier. What’s
it called? Chichester. That’s what it says in the alumni magazine.”

“That’s what she writes in to the people who put together the alumni magazine,” Ellen said. “They don’t check. I could tell
them I owned the world and they’d put it in there. But it’s a lie. Chichester is only open in the summer.”

“Why tell that lie?” Rose asked.

“Maybe because it’s the dream we all had for ourselves at Tech. To never sell out. To only do important work. To be true to
the theater,” Marly guessed. “I know I’m jealous every time I read that.”

“Yes!” Greenie said suddenly, pulling a video cassette out of one of the boxes and then out of its sleeve. “Shall we?” he
asked and shoved it into the VCR. There was a black screen, then a hand-lettered sign that said,
BETTY NORELL SWANSON, THE GLASS MENAGERIE. PRODUCED BY HER DAUGHTER POLLY SWANSON
. After an instant there she was, with gray hair, a lined face, the way she’d looked in
The House of Bernarda Alba
when she played the ugly jealous sister.

“As you know, I was supposed to be inducted into my office at the D.A.R. this afternoon,” she said in the character of Amanda
Wingfield in
The Glass Menagerie
.

“I remember when she did a scene at Tech from this and she played Laura, the daughter,” Rose said.

“We all used to play the daughter, dear,” Marly said, and Greenie turned up the volume on Betty’s voice. It was a great, deep,
resonant sound.

“But I stopped off at Rubicam’s business college to talk to your teachers about your having a cold and to ask them what progress
they thought you were making down there,” she said, and her performance was already powerful. She had just spoken a few lines,
but her instincts about the character were so strong, her ability to lose herself within the role so sharp, that she was well
into it. That expression on her face was the look of a mother whose dreams had all crashed to the ground.

Ellen put a cold hand on her own hot face. The woman she was seeing was the woman on the tram, the woman carrying a striped
purse. The striped purse Eddie the pool man had seen when Betty Norell came to her house looking for her. Probably she was
the next one to be attacked. The way she’d attacked Jan. But why? It didn’t matter why.

“She’s on the lot. Call security,” Ellen said out loud. Her voice was filled with terror. “I saw her go by on the tour, a
few minutes ago. She probably took the tour to get on the lot, and she must be planning to shoot me next.” Betty Norell, the
best actress in the class, had sent her a tape, and she’d never watched it. Betty Norell was the one who shot Jan, and now…

“The phones are dead,” Greenie reminded her.

“Well, I may be, too, if you don’t get through, now! Call from my car. Tell them they have to cover all the trams and find
a middle-aged woman carrying a big striped purse.”

Greenie grabbed Ellen’s keys and ran out the door to her car.

“My God, I just remembered,” Rose said. “A long time ago, right around the time Allan was so ill, I got a letter from her.
It was sent to my agent’s office because the Writers’ Guild won’t give out our home addresses, but they will tell people who
want to reach us who our agents are, and she said something like, ‘I know you’re some big fancy hotshot now, and don’t have
time for someone like me, but you better help me.’ I thought it was so mean-spirited, and I was hurting so much from my own
loss, I never answered it.”

“Buy why would she want to kill you? Not returning somebody’s calls isn’t a reason for murder,” Marly said. “If it
was
, the whole William Morris office would be dead.” Nobody laughed.

“Who knows. Jealous, enraged at what she perceives is our unqualified success,” Ellen said.

Greenie entered, red-faced. “Security says they can’t do anything for you. They told me if you have problems, you’ll have
to take care of them yourself,” he said.

“Then let’s go,” Ellen said.

“Where?” Rose asked.

The video was still on and now Amanda Wingfield was saying “… little birdlike women without any nest, eating the crust of
humility all their life!”

“Ellen, this tour is so huge, and if you think you saw her go by a few minutes ago, she could be anywhere now,” Greenie said.
“There are shows, and rides, and stores, and stands, and booths, and thirty thousand people a day doing them. You’ve been
back there often enough to know how nuts it would be to try and find her. Besides, what if she has
a gun and figures out that you’re looking for her? Let’s call the police and let them take care of this.”

“Fine, call Rita Connelly at the West Hollywood Police station. Tell her to rush here. But by the time she does, this woman
could be gone. I’m going to find her. She shot our friend.” Ellen pulled her car keys out of Greenie’s hand and rushed out
the door of the bungalow.

Marly looked at Rose. “I think this falls into the category of Turkish prisons and backs of ambulances, kiddo, so we’d better
go, too.”

The dark-tinted windows of Ellen’s BMW made the squintingly bright day look grayish to Rose as she slid in.

“Where are we going to look first?” she asked, leaning forward from the backseat and talking to Ellen, who was backing the
car out of her parking place.

“I don’t have a fucking clue,” Ellen admitted.

“I’ve never been on the Hemisphere tour,” Marly said.

“Well, don’t say I never take you anywhere,” Ellen said, and she floored the car up the hill toward the tour center.

  
35
  

R
ose envied the camera-toting, summer-clothed groups of people, walking with their arms around one another from the parking
lot to the ticket booth. A large group of Japanese tourists were having their photo taken together, laughing and jockeying
for position in front of the
HEMISPHERE HOLLYWOOD
sign. A photo, she thought, taken of the four of them at Tech. What in the hell was it doing ripped up and in her wastebasket?
That particular photo.

This morning when Antonia, her three-day-a-week cleaning lady, came in, Rose asked her if she knew anything about it, but
her cleaning lady looked at the pieces Rose had assembled, and she shook her head.

“I never thought I’d see the day I’d actually pay to do this,” Ellen said as she parked. The three of them got out of the
car into the glaring sunny day, and walked over to the ticket kiosks to stand in line behind a large noisy family with seven
children, all under the age of twelve. “While we’re waiting, we’d better figure out if we’re staying together or splitting
up, if one of us takes the shops and another one takes the rides and another one takes the shows until we find her.”

“And more important, what we do
if
we find her,” Rose said. “I’m afraid. If you’re right, she could still have the gun. I turned down a big offer to do a rewrite
on
Kindergarten Cop
because I hate guns.”

Ellen slid her company MasterCard under the glass to the woman in the ticket booth and held her breath, wondering if the studio
schmucks had canceled that, too, but somehow the charge card she used for all of her expense account items must have slipped
their minds, because it cleared, and the woman handed her three tickets and three brochures.

“Are we having fun yet?” she asked Marly and Rose, and nudged them through the turnstile. Inside the gate they stopped to
psych out what they were going to do, and Rose and Ellen looked at Marly, who had her eyes closed.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Ellen said. “Asking your bladder where Betty’s hiding?”

“I’m getting in touch with my natural knowingness, which is going to help me intuit how we should best do this,” Marly said
softly, her eyes still closed.

Rose saw Ellen’s impatience rise, and she was feeling angry herself, and afraid, and not so sure that all of this wasn’t some
manifestation of Ellen’s being forced to move off the lot in such an ugly, stress-provoking way. Betty Norell had been a nice,
quiet girl at Tech. She tried to remember the times they’d interacted in those days. To picture her in her mind, in the dorms,
in the cafeteria.

Betty had run downstairs with her the day she and Allan were pinned. Stood next to her. And Betty… one memory stopped her,
and chilled her. Wasn’t it Betty Norell who had snapped the now torn picture of the four of them? Wasn’t she walking by them
one day right after Marly got her new camera,
and they were all laughing and carrying on and taking pictures of one another and were dying to have a picture of the four
of them together. Didn’t Betty Norell walk by, and didn’t one of them ask her to take that picture? That had to be a coincidence.
Even if she was here, in town, even if she was the one who shot Jan, there was no way she could have found her way into Rose’s
home office.