Silent Murders (35 page)

The fourth scandal is the one that inspired my own fictional account of the murder of the fictional director Bruno Heilmann. It was the mysterious shooting in 1922 of famous director William Desmond Taylor. The police investigation was completely botched, and every single one of the dozen or so suspects was hiding secrets. Newspaper reporters shamelessly sensationalized all aspects of the story, exaggerating or fabricating outright lurid tales of sex, homosexuality, drug dealing, gangsters, hit men, bribery, theft, forgery, insanity, and prostitution. William Desmond Taylor’s murder was never solved. If you like wading through true-life tangles of lies, cover-ups, and mystery, you can read more about this intriguing case online or in
A Cast of Killers
.

Eight years after my story takes place, on September 16, 1932, a depressed, twenty-four-year-old actress named Peggy Entwistle hiked to the base of the
HOLLYWOODLAND
sign, took off her jacket, folded it neatly beside her purse, which contained a short suicide note, climbed a ladder to the top of the
H,
and jumped. Her body was found two days later. The huge sign, meant as a temporary advertisement for a housing development of the same name, fell into disrepair. When it was restored in 1949, the last four letters were removed and it looked as it does today.

ALSO BY MARY MILEY

The Impersonator

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MARY MILEY is the winner of the 2012 Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award. She has worked at Colonial Williamsburg, taught American history at Virginia Commonwealth University for thirteen years, and has published extensively in history and travel. This is her second novel. Miley lives in Richmond, Virginia.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

SILENT MURDERS.
Copyright © 2014 by Mary Miley Theobald. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

Cover photograph © Condé Nast Archive/Corbis

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Miley, Mary.

    Silent murders / Mary Miley.—First edition.

            pages    cm

    ISBN 978-1-250-05137-0 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-4668-6518-1 (e-book)

  1.  Actresses—Fiction.   2.  Impersonation—Fiction.   [1.  Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—History—20th century—Fiction.]   I.  Title.

    PS3613.I532244S55 2014

    813'.6—dc23

2014016746

e-ISBN 9781466865181

First Edition: September 2014