Chapter nine

On a rainy evening in April, near the end of the StarBash television season, Lenora sat at the desk in her home office and carefully inspected the mail. None of the letters had her name on them. They had Cassandra Moreaux’s name. Lenora had been intercepting Cassandra’s mail from the beginning. The effort hadn’t produced anything of interest…until this day. Cassandra had received correspondence from a private investigator in Los Angeles.

The scalpel cut into the top of the seam on the ten-inch envelope and then sliced all the way to the bottom. In just a few seconds the envelope had been opened, and Lenora had the contents in her hand: a birth certificate and a printed summary of the detective’s investigation. Lenora recognized the birth certificate. Three or four identical documents currently resided right there in her safe. She also recognized the names, dates, and facts in the report. Cassandra now had everything she needed. Time was running out.

Lenora had encountered formidable enemies in the past, but she’d never had one who marched as relentlessly as Cassandra Moreaux. And she’d never had one who’s stated purpose had been to destroy the very thing that Lenora cared about most in the world.

Lenora didn’t believe in self-sacrifice or any of the altruistic shackles that bound the human race. She had never known anyone who had turned ten bucks into twenty by turning the other cheek. She didn’t believe in love, which she considered an affectation that desperate people add to compensate for emotional deficiencies. Even the idea of relationship, as practiced by the masses, baffled Lenora. She didn’t understand why two people, who randomly converge at a place in time, felt the need to embellish the occurrence and call it something special. She called them affiliations and used them all the time. And when they lost their usefulness, she discarded them. Lenora understood self-sufficiency. She understood discipline, focus, and sacrifice. Most of all, Lenora understood the necessity of a person to change the world by living up to their full potential. And if that potential had enough power behind it, and if that person dramatically exceeded their potential by a wide enough margin, then that very same person had the rightful privilege of changing the world long after they had died. That’s what Lenora believed in. She believed in legacy.

And what about existence itself, the philosopher’s endless fodder? Lenora had come to have doubts about that, too. At best, even the most glorious existence represented a mere flicker in the infinite darkness…unless, once again, it had been properly illuminated by a carefully tended legacy. And Lenora had tended her legacy with meticulous devotion. And now the time had come to turn it loose. The final act of a perfectly lived life, Lenora believed, happened when the sheer glory and magnitude of the legacy fully supplanted the comparably weak and frail existence. Lenora looked forward to her final act, to the time when Lenora Danmore the person faded into the mist in order to make way for Lenora Danmore the young beauty who never ever fades. This eternal soul dances a ring around the world every day without fail. She sings and pouts and cracks jokes. The sun never sets without her laughing and crying with a million old friends. And when the sun comes up again, she makes a million new friends. Lenora had a vision of a perfectly lived life. Mortal must bow to immortal. Lenora the decrepit must vanish so that Lenora the celluloid legacy could live forever.

But what happens when the celluloid legacy is threatened? In the past she’d had enough clout to easily squash it. She’d throw open a door, make the studio boss cry, and the next morning there’d be heads on silver platters. And now, decades later, Lenora no longer had any studio bosses in her pocket, but she didn’t need them. She had the power of success and the passage of time on her side. Success smooths over blemishes, and the more success you have, the smoother you look. The passage of time works the same way. Events that happened sixty or seventy years ago seem to lose their girth. If you can see them at all, they look small compared to the problems of today. Even the so-called information age, in which the masses gorge on scandals of all sizes and shapes, had not harmed Lenora.

And yet one enemy still remained. This enemy had set her sights on the treasure of Lenora’s life. That treasure included fifty-seven movies, seventeen top ten, seven top grossers, five Oscar nominations, and two best-actress wins. An unreasonable zealot had come to destroy a priceless legacy. Lenora’s head popped with anger when she thought about it.

She put the certificate back into the envelope and resealed it. It didn’t make any sense shredding it when the investigator had probably sent an electronic image before he even dropped this one into the mail. Besides, this problem had passed the point where papers, or even stacks of papers, even mattered. Nobody in the world cared about any of those papers…except Cassandra Moreaux. Cassandra had become the one and only problem.

 

***

 

The nightcap rested on a small tray that Micah held in one hand while he knocked on Lenora’s door with the other.

“Put it on the coffee table,” said Lenora from the office.

Micah pushed into the reception area and put the tray on the table. He poked his head into the office doorway. Lenora stared down at some envelopes on her desk.

“Good night, Lenora.” said Micah.

“There’s nothing good about it, Micah. Not until you make the deal for season five,” said Lenora.

“Good night, Lenora. See you in the morning.”

She didn’t respond.

 

***

 

Cass looked closely at the birth certificate that had been emailed to her. According to the detective, it had come from Poland. The name on it said Karolina Anna Wojtkowiak, which didn’t look a whole lot like Carolyn Voyt, Lenora’s supposed birth name. And that probably had been the key, just as Cass suspected. Lenora had a third name to hide behind. Lenora’s betrayal of Cass’s mom had never been found because Lenora had used a secret name, a name that she had kept safely buried in Poland for the last seventy years.

The detective also found another piece of the puzzle, one that Cass didn’t know had been missing. As a matter of routine, the detective had investigated the parents, as listed on the birth certificate, and found that the father had been a known communist organizer who had fled with his family to America before the police could arrest him for suspected arson.

Cass immediately saw the significance. How much more likely is a person to snitch to the FBI if the FBI already has that person on the radar? And a Hollywood actor who happened to be the daughter of a known communist organizer certainly sounded like something the FBI would have found interesting.

This journey, a debt of love to her mother, had taken five long years. Wrong turns and dead ends had plagued her every step of the way. But now Cass started to believe that she might actually have Lenora cornered. Only one test remained: the name had to be sent to the FBI.