Chapter Twelve

Next morning, Kate grabbed her copy of the police report on Gloria’s murder and headed straight to the Hollywood police station. She asked if Detective Terrence Sweeney still worked there. She was told he’d left the force over ten years ago. That wasn’t good. From the report it was evident he was one of the few people to raise questions about the case. Maybe too many, because he was taken off it.

Kate thumbed through the report and saw the name of a Detective Joseph Robak, who had taken several statements from crew members on the soundstage that day. But the desk sergeant at the Hollywood station had never heard of him. But he gave her a list of all the police precincts in town and told her Detective Robak might work at one of them.

Kate drove to her Silver Lake apartment, thinking it would offer some privacy. She had to admit she’d really come to love living at Jarvis’s mansion. Yet, there was something eerie about the place, too. She couldn’t get over the feeling of being watched.

To be fair, Jarvis, Lillian, and Dylan didn’t seem like the sneaky type. If they wanted to know something, they’d just ask.

God knows, the same was true of Beatrice, although she usually told, not asked. Jimena and Kioshi were the opposite. They had perfected the art of going about their work while blending into the background, so she’d forgotten they were even there. Then there was Gloria. Real or imagined, her presence was everywhere, calling to her, warning her that danger was near.

Now that she thought of it, the moist heat and that warm overtaking sensation she identified as Gloria was qualitatively different than the times she felt she’d seen someone out of the corner of her eye surveilling her. Were they caused by different things? She was beginning to think so.

She unlocked the door of the apartment and was dismayed to find several film students asleep in her living room.

So much for privacy.

Natalie had told her that she’d invited some friends from school to stay there while they were both away. But Kate hadn’t expected the entire film graduate program crashing here. Empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays everywhere. There must have been some party here last night. What a mess.

She tiptoed over to the makeshift bookcase, grabbed the phone directory, and snuck into her bedroom. Some stranger was asleep in her bed. She headed down the hallway to Natalie’s room. Kate wasn’t surprised, but was sorry, to find it empty. Wasn’t she due back soon?

She’d tried several times to leave her a message at the artist’s studio Natalie was interning with, but only got the artist’s answering machine. They must be out in the desert putting up the installation.

Kate sat cross-legged on the floor mattress and thumbed through the telephone book’s government pages. She methodically called each listed police station and asked if a Joseph Robak worked there. On her fourth try, she lucked out and was told he worked out of the West L.A. Station. She asked to speak to him.

She was placed on hold and subjected to an easy listening rendition of I Wanna Hold Your Hand. The desk sergeant returned to the phone and told her that Detective Robak was too busy to speak to her today but said she could make an appointment to see him next week.

Kate wasn’t in the mood to wait. Besides, she detected something in the sergeant’s tone, a hint of a laugh maybe. Whatever it was, she didn’t quite trust him. She thanked the officer, hung up, and tip-toed back through the apartment.

Still no movement from the sleeping students. For a moment she felt like a ghost haunting her own past.

She shut the front door and, with a touch of sadness, understood her previous life no longer fit her.

****

The reception area at the West L.A. Police station was a small, rectangular area with linoleum floors, fluorescent lights, and plastic benches against two of its walls. She walked up to a thick plastic window that began midway up the wall and ended at the ceiling. It had a small opening at the bottom and something that looked like a little speaker to talk to the officer on the other side. Next to the window was a door.

A black officer turned and looked at her through the hazy window. He was at least six-two and with the posture of a marine. His uniform looked starched, and his buttons gleamed.

“I’d like to speak to Detective Robak, please.”

The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t we speak on the phone?”

“We did.”

“And didn’t I tell you he wasn’t available?”

“You did.”

“Yet here you are.”

“I am.” She suddenly had an irrational fear that she was going to be arrested on the charge of being annoying.

He stared at her as if he was waiting for her to blink first. She held his gaze. The officer shook his head and smiled. “Would you like to tell me what this is about?”

“No, I need to speak to him, only him.”

“We’re a team here. Let’s begin with your name.”

“Kate Bloom. It’s about an old case, a case Detective Robak worked on. That’s why I need to speak to him.”

The desk sergeant scribbled something in a large ledger. “What’s the case?”

“I’d rather not say.”

He gave her a withering look, but she kept her mouth shut. He lifted one hand as if surrendering. “Okay, I don’t think it’ll do any good, but I’ll try again and ask if he’ll speak to you.”

She sat on the hard bench, her hands fidgeting, until the desk sergeant came back. When he did, he shook his head. “Sorry. Detective Robak’s not available. He’s got his retirement party this week, and doesn’t need—”

Kate leapt to her feet. “Wait a minute. He’s retiring this week? On the phone you tried to set my appointment with him for next week.”

The desk sergeant wouldn’t meet her gaze. “His joke, not mine.”

She sat back down on the bench. “I’m waiting right here.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Two hours passed. Occasionally, she’d see an officer walk by her and wondered if it could be Robak. She imagined what he’d look like. She figured he’d be a grizzled, tired-looking man, with nicotine-stained fingers, a rumpled shirt, and sad, droopy Robert Mitchum eyes. So she was surprised when the desk sergeant surreptitiously pointed to a man with a relaxed, tan face who had just walked out of the building.

Detective Robak had slightly long salt-and-pepper hair and a thin nose with a pointed tip. He wore a blue button-down work shirt, open at the collar and corduroy jacket with suede patches at the elbows. He looked more like one of her professors than how she had imagined a cop.

She thanked the sergeant and ran after the detective. Outside, she looked around quickly. He was heading toward a parking lot.

She caught up with him just when he had swung open the door of a Ford Torino.

“Detective Robak? May I speak to you?”

He turned and looked at her. Or, at least, she assumed he did. He’d glanced over her right shoulder, yet his glassy eyes were unfocused on anything in particular. He didn’t appear outright sad but as if he’d forgotten how to smile.

Kate saw that one of her stereotypes had been correct. He did have Robert Mitchum eyes, with that I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-the-world expression.

“Listen, I’m on my way home.” He said that with a gentle but firm voice, as if she were a misbehaving child. “If this is an emergency, you’ll get more help inside. And if it’s not, I don’t want to know about it.” He turned back to his car, pulled out part of a newspaper he had folded in his back pocket, and threw it into the passenger seat.

Kate saw it was the Sunday crossword puzzle, The New York Times, no less, and done in ink. Now she felt even more sure he was the right guy to talk to.

“Please, I’ve tried to talk to you all day.”

He had one hand on the top of his car door. “Oh, you’re the mystery girl. Who won’t tell anyone what you want to talk about. Go away.”

“I have reasons—”

“Doesn’t everybody. That’s not the way the force works, kiddo. You can’t just demand to see anybody you want when you want.”

“Except it’s your case. That’s why I want to speak to you.”

“None of them are my cases anymore.” He looked at her for the first time. “You see this?” He lifted up his lapel. Attached to it was a pin with the round seal of the City of Los Angeles. “My retirement present. Not much for thirty-five years. But I guess it’s better than a watch.” She thought she detected a note of pride in his voice. But then it was gone when he said, “By the end of this week I’m off duty. So, miss, why don’t you march back into the station and explain your problem to a real police officer.”

“I’m scared!” Kate blurted.

Why had she said that? It wasn’t true, was it? Looking at everything logically, none of this was about her. It was about the past, and that was all it was. She was beginning to sound as overdramatic as Lillian.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I have no reason to think I’m in danger, not really. And I have a lot of good reasons to keep what’s going on secret. In fact, everybody wants me to.”

He must have sensed real fear in her voice for the more she babbled the more his eyes darkened and his focus on her became acute.

“Except, what if they’re not?” she continued, unable to slow down. “Please, Detective Robak, I need to talk to you.”

“Okay, kiddo. You win.” He placed a reassuring hand on her arm. “We can go over to Bette’s Coffee Shop. You’ve got until I finish a cinnamon roll to tell me what this is all about.”

****

The coffee shop was within walking distance of the police station. It was the type of joint that had a box of cigars in the display case, crayons for kids to draw on the paper placemats, and a large assortment of pies and pastries. Not fancy pastries, but big, sticky ones. It was late afternoon. Most of the people there appeared to be in their sixties or older. Kate guessed they were taking advantage of the early-bird meatloaf special.

Detective Robak and Kate sat in a booth by the grease smudged window. After they each placed their order of coffee and a cinnamon roll, Detective Robak propped his chin in one hand. “So, what’s the old case?”

“Gloria Reardon’s murder.”

Robak rubbed his forehead. “Oh, no. You’re one of them.”

“What?”

“A nut who thinks she sees conspiracies everywhere. No, it couldn’t just be a lovers’ quarrel gone bad, not for the illustrious Winston Nash and Gloria Reardon. It had to be that she was really a spy or having a damn affair with Ike or something. Listen, Nash may have gotten off on a technicality, thanks to his high-priced lawyer, but he killed her. It’s as simple as that.”

The detective rose as if to leave. Luckily, the waitress brought the cinnamon rolls at that moment and refreshed their coffee. From the way Robak gazed at the warm, gooey roll, she didn’t think he was going anywhere right away.

After eating his first bite, which he took a ridiculously long time to do, Robak said, “Not to mention the man didn’t even deny it. Nash just sobbed and said he couldn’t remember a thing. Damn drunk. He had motive, opportunity, and a trail of shards from the murder weapon leading right to his office at the studio. Case closed.”

Kate tore off a small piece of her sticky bun. “Your partner, Detective Sweeney, didn’t believe Nash did it.”

“He thought there were some unanswered questions. That’s all.”

“Do you know where Sweeney is? Maybe I can talk to him.”

Robak’s gaze drifted off. “I wish you could. He died a couple years back.” He looked at her. “Tell me, what does any of this have to do with you? You a reporter or, I know, look at you, a die-hard fan, a Gloria wannabe. Why anyone wants to be a corpse, I don’t know.”

“She was my grandmother.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“I have questions.” Kate hesitated, imagining the angry faces of Dylan and Jarvis if they knew what she was about to tell the detective. “And, I have some new evidence.”

Robak’s face lit with interest, but then his expression changed as he shook his head. “Listen, I’m retiring this week, I’m not your guy. There’s a detective, a good one, assigned to cold cases. That’s who you should be talking to.”

“Please, they—I mean, where the new evidence is, well, if it gets out, it’ll take off like media wildfire, and I can’t let that happen, not yet.”

“Why?”

“Will you give me your word you won’t tell anyone?”

“No.” Robak popped another bite of roll into his mouth. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, chewing slowly. “I’m retired, at least almost. If what you say doesn’t require me to report it to the brass, I won’t.”

“Thank you,” Kate practically shouted.

Robak held up a hand. “Hold on, there, kiddo. Let’s be clear. I’m not going to keep quiet if I think someone’s in danger or it shields a criminal. Got it?”

“Sure.” Kate told him about finding the missing footage, about how the head of Infinity Studios was financing the restoration, and that while working on it, she’d seen the box that was supposed to have the murder weapon in it had been moved hours before Winston could’ve taken it. She also told Robak why she thought some of the statements in the police report didn’t add up and about the burglary at her garage.

All the while, he sat listening, his sad eyes looking at her.

She babbled on, telling the detective, this stranger, things she’d originally had no intention of telling anyone—about the feeling she was being watched, of the strange bumps in the night. She felt so relieved to finally be telling someone of all her fears, someone with no stake in the history, someone she could trust.

When she’d finished, the detective looked as if he was figuring out an algebra problem in his head. “What were you hoping to find in the garage?”

Kate shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly. Suddenly, it seemed like the box was the key. Or, more precisely, what had been in the box. I guess I thought if I could examine it, see if any of the tiny shards were still inside, maybe I could figure out what the weapon was.”

He smirked. “You don’t think we cleaned out the box before returning it to the family, or that we hadn’t tried to figure out the same thing a hundred times before?”

“I knew it was a long shot. But maybe, I don’t know, because of time, perspective, I’d figure something out. I guess it comes down to questions. Detective Sweeney had them, and so do I. I went to the garage because I wanted to see the box again. Now that I know her stuff was stolen, it makes me even more certain that there was a clue there. And now it’s gone.”

“It’s not all gone. We bagged every speck of evidence found in or near that box before returning it.” Robak tapped the table with his sticky fingers. “We still have evidence from the crime scene, including shards from the statue.”

“Statue? You know for certain the weapon was a statue?” she said with a rush of excitement.

“Sure,” he said. “Give us some credit. We figured that out by analyzing the white shards scattered all over the room. It was made of high-quality marble.”

“I knew the shards had been made of marble; it was in the report. But not that the weapon was a statue. Why was that fact not in the police report?”

A hint of a smile played on his lips. “It’s not in your police report. It doesn’t mean it’s not in the file.”

“Wow.” She pushed her cinnamon roll aside. “Do you think the weapon…the statue was an antique?”

“No. An analysis of the marble showed it was new, no more than a year old, but still expensive high-quality.”

“If it was new and expensive, couldn’t you track down the artist and find out who bought it?”

He shook his head. “We tried, but the little we had of it wasn’t enough to go on. What we do know is the crime was very violent. Marble doesn’t break easily. The fact it chipped at all shows the killer must have been lashing out and hitting anything in his way. Gloria was the killer’s target, but the weapon hit tables and chairs and—”

A whirl of images flashed in Kate’s mind’s eye as Robak spoke. Images of the dressing room she’d recently seen in her dream, but now that same room was the site of blood and destruction.

Her voice sounded empty, far away, as she heard herself say, “And the statue smashed the vase with the yellow roses from Winston and his beautiful flowers lay crumpled on the floor next to—”

“How’d you know that?” Robak grabbed her hand from across the table.

The dizzying vision stilled, and Kate was once again staring into the detective’s skeptical face.

“From the police report…I guess.” She tried pulling her hand out of his grip but he didn’t let go.

He shook his head. “Try again.”

“Or maybe from an old newspaper. I don’t know.” She pulled away, and this time he let go of her hands. “I mean, it was everywhere that flowers were found at the scene.”

“It was reported flowers were found but not the type that littered the ground next to Gloria. We held that fact back to ferret out the charlatans who get their kicks out of confessing to famous murders.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.” Robak’s eyes narrowed in on her. “So tell me, who told you about the type of flowers found?”

Kate looked away from detective’s penetrating stare.

Gloria told me. But who’d believe that?

She shrugged. “I just assumed. I mean, how could someone like Gloria not be given roses? And red ones would have been much too commonplace for her.”

“You do raise questions.” Robak rubbed his chin. “Okay, kiddo, tell you what. I’ll pull some strings and review the file.”

She wanted to cheer. Instead she tried to remain calm. Hard to do, between sugar, caffeine, and now a cop to help her—who knew relief could be so elating.

“Hey,” she said. “Maybe it’s better you’re retiring. Could I hire you as a private detective or something? That way this can just stay between us.”

“Sorry. My wife’s already got our bags packed, ready to go live the easy life in Arizona on my pension. The last thing she wants is for me to be a private detective.”

Interesting how he had emphasized the word she in the last sentence. Kate remembered how his eyes lit up when she mentioned she’d found new information about Gloria’s murder. She leaned toward him with a conspiratorial smile. “Your wife doesn’t want you to be a detective. What about you?”

“Don’t get smart.” He gave her a grudging nod. “Maybe I can take a look-see. Mind, I think this is all hooey. The burglary at your garage is probably not connected to Gloria’s death. And don’t take this the wrong way, but the bump in the night crap you talked about is probably just your imagination. So I wouldn’t worry about it. The box being removed at least an hour before Winston left the set… That’s interesting. Listen, this is stuff I can’t sit on. It’ll probably go nowhere, but I’ve got to let people know.”

“We’re so close to finishing the restoration of the film. We’re just worried that if this gets out before we’re done, it’ll be taken away from us.”

“You mean by J. B. Sutton, aka Smythe?”

“Yes. If he gets the film before we can restore and show it, I’m afraid it will conveniently get lost or be destroyed.”

“That doesn’t seem very important when you’re talking about murder, but then I’m not a film buff.”

“Please, can you wait just a little while? Let me talk to Jarvis.”

Robak leaned back. “You said he’s bankrolling this restoration, right?”

Kate nodded.

“If he doesn’t want this out, I guess I can hold onto the information for a little while, but not too long.”

“Just short-term. Jarvis agrees with me the film needs to be seen. That’s the whole point. Give me a chance to convince him to make it public soon. Once we do, I don’t care who knows about my suspicions, real or imagined.”

Detective Robak pulled out a pen and wrote a phone number on a napkin. “My home number. Anything else happens you give me a call, okay?”

She felt like launching herself across the table and hugging him. “Thank you.”