Silent Murders (4 page)

“She’s being kind. I did a little of everything in vaudeville; now I’m just a script girl in training for the director of one of Mr. Fairbanks’s pictures.” He was a few years older than Myrna, a rugged sort, and I had no trouble imagining him as a logger or a cowboy or a sheriff from Montana. “Are you an actor?”

“Aimin’ to be. Now I’m just an extra, like Myrna here. Been in two pictures so far, both westerns. Ten dollars a day. Who’d’ve thought little Myrna Williams and Judge Cooper’s boy would be in the pictures?”

“I’m Myrna Loy now. Just made the change this week. What do you think?”

“Has a nice ring to it. I’ve changed my name, too. A lady casting director suggested Gary instead of Frank. She said it sounded rough and tough, like Gary, Indiana. Probably won’t stick. Everyone calls me Coop anyway. Can I get you gals something more from the table?” He held out his own empty plate and headed toward the nearest spread of food. I’d never seen a man put away more than Gary Cooper did that night—he must have eaten ten times the amount Myrna and I ate together. I wondered how he stayed so slim.

We spent some time dancing to the lively music of the jazz band and did our best to drink all of Bruno Heilmann’s champagne. Some of the younger set were throwing their arms and legs in the air and toddling every step in the foxtrot, and everyone did the Charleston. A woman beside me shimmied until some of the fringe on her dress flew off. I gave up trying to stick close to Myrna—she was doing fine on her own, and I was having a swell time.

Around midnight, someone tapped my shoulder. I turned to see the champagne waitress.

“Excuse me, miss. Aren’t you Chloë Randall’s little girl from vaudeville?”

Shocked silent at the unexpected thrust back in time, I blinked before I found my voice. “Why—yes! How on earth—”

“I been looking at you all night, trying to think who you remind me of, and then it come to me. You’re Chloë Randall’s little girl she called Baby.”

“Yes! Oh, my goodness! Who are you?”

“You won’t remember me; it was more than fifteen, maybe twenty years ago, and you were just a kid. I’m Esther Frankel, and I knew your ma when we was on stage. Not together, I don’t mean that. She sang, and I was with a German dance troupe. But we were on the same circuit for a year and got to be friends. I was awful sad when I heard she passed.”

Suddenly, the party seemed frivolous. My eyes stung. I blinked hard. “Esther. Yes, I remember her friend Esther. I remember you.”

She chuckled. “Well, you can’t recognize me; I’m a lot fatter than I was in those days. And you’ve changed a good bit, too, but you haven’t grown much. You are the spitting image of your mother.” She looked around furtively. “Look, I’d love to talk with you a little, but I can’t do that here. I’m working, you know, and they wouldn’t like me to mix with guests.”

“Come on,” I said, “let’s slip into the kitchen.”

“What’s that? I don’t hear so good, especially with all this noise.”

“I said, let’s go into the kitchen. It’ll be quieter.”

We ducked through the swinging doors and into the relative stillness of a small butler’s pantry. The kitchen counters were stacked high with food trays and pots and pans, and two men who could have been Mexican, wearing aprons lettered with
CISNEROS BROTHERS CATERING
, darted about in a frenzy coordinating the food and staff for this huge affair. I wanted to hear about my mother, and Esther wanted to hear about me, but the two chief cooks were throwing unhappy looks in my direction. I was distracting one of their workers.

Esther frowned. “Look, this won’t do, either. Why don’t you come by my place tomorrow? I have some playbills of your ma, maybe ones you haven’t seen. We can have some coffee and a nice long talk about the old days, and you can tell me what you’re doing here in Hollywood, and I can tell you what I remember ’bout your ma.”

“Oh, Esther,” I said, as she cupped one hand behind her ear, “you have no idea how much I’d love that! I was only twelve when she died, and I don’t know anyone who knew her in her younger days.”

“We won’t be done here until late … two or three o’clock maybe. Still, I don’t sleep late these days, no matter what. Come around ten or eleven. Here’s my address.” She scribbled on a notepad by the telephone on the wall. “The Red Car’ll get you most of the way there, and then you can walk just three blocks.”

She squeezed my hand, and on impulse I threw my arms around her in a big hug. “See you tomorrow, Esther.”

When I returned to the patio, Myrna and Gary Cooper were still dancing. I waited until the music paused to pull her aside. “Myrna, the last Red Car runs at half after midnight, remember.” She pouted prettily, but didn’t protest. Neither of us could afford a taxi. We said good night to Coop, retrieved our wraps from the butler, and headed out the front door.

A couple dozen guests were gathered around the fountain where a lovely young actress was sitting in the water. It looked like the same girl who had been slapped earlier—if so, she’d recovered nicely. Several men were pouring martinis over her head, causing her to laugh prettily down the notes of a scale. Her wet clothing was plastered to her curves, revealing the fact that she had forgotten to wear undergarments. Someone picked up another young woman who gave a charming shriek as she was plopped in the water, too. Myrna and I crept along the edge of the courtyard in the shadows.

“Call me a scaredy-cat, but I’d rather not ruin my frock.” Myrna giggled. “What a divine party! I’m so very, very glad you asked Bruno Heilmann to include me.” She was a little tipsy. Well, so was I.

Walking none too steadily through the gate, we retraced our steps downhill toward Hollywood Boulevard. I felt as light as the breeze that teased our hair. It had been a perfect evening … a night to remember forever. Ten minutes later, we hopped the crowded streetcar heading east.

“Who was that old woman serving drinks?” asked Myrna, grabbing a hand strap since there was no place to sit. “I saw you talking to her like you knew her.”

“Believe it or not, that was a friend of my mother’s from vaudeville. I barely remember her from when I was a little girl. We couldn’t talk at the party while she was working, but she invited me to her house for coffee tomorrow, and she’s going to tell me some stories about my mother.”

“Gosh, you must be excited!”

More than excited, I was thrilled. “She has a collection of playbills that includes some of my mother’s. Seeing those…” I swallowed hard before I could continue. “You see, I don’t have any photographs of my mother, and, well, seeing those playbills will…” I couldn’t go on. I didn’t need to. Myrna squeezed my hand.

Although it was after midnight, Hollywood Boulevard was ablaze with lights and alive with throngs of people milling in and out of restaurants, clubs, and speakeasies, hopping on and off the Red Cars at every intersection, some returning, like us, from a party, others heading out for further mischief. Shop doors stood open to the evening air. Flower stalls with pails full of colorful blossoms and white booths selling fresh orange juice did brisk business. Sleep came late to Hollywood.

“I sure liked your friend Gary Cooper. Is there any romance between you two?”

“Oh, no, not with Coop. He’s just an old friend from home. We were never really close ’cause he’s about four years older than me, and I barely knew him growing up. He’s nice, but too quiet for my taste and kind of dull. And he’s too tall for you!” she teased.

“Heck, everyone is too tall for me,” I said cheerfully.

“How come you don’t have a sweetheart, Jessie?”

The silence stretched between us as I considered how to respond. I had told Myrna and the girls I lived with that I was unattached, but was it true? Did I have a sweetheart? I had thought so, at one point. I had thought myself in love with a wonderful fellow who made my heart pound and my mouth go dry, but I guess I wasn’t, not any longer.

Unfortunately, my pause made Myrna think she had offended me. “Never mind, it’s none of my business,” she said hastily.

I reassured her. “It’s not that, Myrna. I’m afraid I really don’t know how to answer. There was someone last fall when I was in Oregon. First I thought there was no chance for us; then for a short time, it seemed there might be. Turned out he wasn’t the person I thought he was. He left right after I got hurt, and I don’t know where he is now. And that’s all for the best.”

“Never mind, there are loads of eligible men in Hollywood. Maybe you’d like Coop. I was just kidding about his being too tall for you.”

“Oh, thanks! Give me the dull ones, will you?” I teased.

We walked down the street a couple blocks, laughing most of the way, then snagged a shortcut through an empty lot that came out near the rear door of our house. One of the girls had left the back light on for us, but the bulb was weak. I was fumbling through my purse for the key when Myrna gasped.

I whirled around and saw her face, white in the dim light. She was staring at the ground in horror. I followed her gaze and saw it.

A dead bird.

I don’t know much about birds—perhaps it was a sparrow or a wren. Something small and brown and ordinary. Its little neck met its body at a right angle, clearly broken. It hadn’t been there when we left.

“Oh, what a shame!” I thought she would pick it up and throw it in the bushes while I searched for my key, but she stood like a statue. I looked at her again. Her face was frozen with panic. A moment ago she had been giggling.

Now, I don’t relish picking up dead animals myself, but I’ve had to deal with countless rodents in my life, and a bird wasn’t going to send me into a fainting spell, as it clearly was Myrna. Without a word, I bent down and gingerly picked up the little corpse with my thumb and forefinger.

“Poor thing. It must have flown into the window and broken its neck.”

Myrna twitched. Really, her reaction astonished me. She wasn’t a child, and it was only a wild bird, not a pet. I took a couple steps to the hedge that separated our house from the neighbors and tossed it into the bushes.

“Come on, let’s go inside.” But she didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her eyes met mine, and I saw genuine fear. “It’s all right, Myrna,” I said gently. “It’s just a wild bird.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“What it means.”

“What
what
means?”

“There’s an old Swedish saying that when a bird hits a window, someone is going to die.”

So that’s what was bothering her.

“No one has died,” I pointed out. It didn’t faze her. “Look, Myrna, there are a lot of old sayings, but they are only superstitions.”

“Not this one.”

4

I woke early the next morning, too keyed up over the prospect of visiting Esther Frankel to go back to sleep.

What child pays attention to her mother’s friends? Certainly not me, but I did have hazy recollections of Esther.
Stay in the room, Baby,
I could hear my mother say.
Esther and I are going out tonight.
We toured the same circuit for a while, a few months, a couple of years; I don’t remember. It was nothing unusual. In vaudeville, agents tend to book to a particular circuit—like the Orpheum Circuit or Pantages, or Palace, or Keith—and those acts would stop at the theaters on that circuit, in a certain order, for the life of the contract. The theater bill changed every week, and with nine or ten acts in a show, it was natural for some to travel between cities in a loosely organized group. At some point in my young life, Esther’s German dance troupe had shared the same billing as my mother’s act. We may even have roomed with her for a while. I’d soon know all the details.

Meanwhile, I gathered my laundry and headed for the basement. There was just enough time before I left for my weekly battle with the Gainaday.

A surprise attack seemed best. Sneaking up on the contraption, I managed to fill its cylinder with soap and hot water before it caught on to my intentions, but the beast retaliated by yanking out its hose and spewing sudsy water all over the basement floor. By the time I had reattached the hose and regrouped for a second assault, its motor was coughing and shuddering like a consumptive, and I feared even my best swear words would not prevent the whole thing from rattling off its legs. A couple of sharp kicks showed it who was boss, and it settled down to swirl, lift, dip, and squeeze my clothes until they were passably clean. I stood guard through two clear water rinses to defend against an unexpected offensive and then fed each sodden garment through the wringer, one by one, wondering each time it pinched my fingers why it was that I struggled with the nasty behemoth every weekend, then reminding myself exactly how much it cost to send out to the Chinese laundry. In the end, I had not gained a day, as the name promised, but I had survived the hostilities and would live to fight again.

When everything was pinned to the line, I brewed a pot of coffee and settled down in the shade of a lemon tree to varnish my toenails and contemplate my visit to Esther’s.

The screen door banged. I looked up. “Morning, Myrna. I hope the racket in the basement didn’t wake you too early.”

“Nah. I smelled the coffee. Thanks for making such a big pot.”

“Figured we’d need it after last night.”

“I feel fine, considering the gallons of champagne I swallowed. What a marvelous drink, champagne! I wonder who invented it? And what a grand party!” She sat on the edge of my lounge chair and sipped her coffee. “I was about to wash my hair but Melva slipped into the bathroom first.”

“You could always use the basement sink.”

“What, go down there alone? Turn my back on that nasty machine? Oh, what a nice color polish. Can I use some?”

The rental we girls shared had been a farmhouse when it was built before the turn of the century, back when Hollywood was known for nothing more than orange and lemon groves. The rusted pump in the backyard and the remnants of an outhouse told the tale of farm life before 1910. That’s when the town annexed itself to Los Angeles in exchange for water and sewer services, and indoor plumbing came along. And that’s when the owners squeezed a flush toilet in the space below the stairs and a bathtub at one end of the upstairs hall. We girls each had our own bedroom: there were three upstairs and two downstairs that had once been the dining room and parlor. Happy as a nesting hen, I hung gingham curtains and bought a rag rug for the bare oak floor. It was the first place I’d ever called my own, and the unaccustomed pleasure of possession made me almost giddy. Every time I walked into my room, I found myself inventorying each item: my pillow, my sheets, my cup, my very own, mine, all mine.