No, you can’t speak to her,” Alexander Shine roared into the phone. “What the hell is wrong with you people? She’s lost her only child!” He was about to slam the phone down when Maxi said, “Dr. Shine, somebody tried to kill me. I know it wasn’t your daughter. I said so on the news last night, before Janet Orson was murdered.”
“What did you say your name is?” he asked.
“Maxi Poole, from Channel Six. I’m the woman whose dog was slashed. I saw the killer, in my home, and I’m sure, now, that it wasn’t Meg Davis—I told the detectives that yesterday. I need to talk to Meg’s mother about it—no cameras, no story.”
“Why?” he asked quietly. “They’re saying that last night’s murder was probably a copycat killing—and besides, it’s too late for Meggie now.”
“It’s not too late to clear her name,” Maxi said.
“Just a minute.” Maxi could hear him talking in muffled tones. Then his wife came on the line.
“I’m sorry; the press keeps calling, and I—” Sally Shine began in an unsteady voice. “I saw your report last night, Ms. Poole, and I appreciate what you said about Meggie. I know my daughter could never have done those things.”
Maxi could hear that the woman was close to tears. “Mrs. Shine,” she said, “please let me come over there and talk to you about Meg, and I promise that nothing you say will go on the air, unless you want it to. I need your help.”
“We’re in the middle of moving…. I’m leaving this apartment—”
“I won’t take more than a few minutes,” Maxi pressed, “and this is important. You might save other lives.”
When Sally Shine reluctantly agreed to a meeting, Maxi flew down to her car and headed for Century City, the teeming high-rise business and residential section of West Los Angeles that was once the old Twentieth Century Fox back lot. It was 9:20. Her clock-radio had gone off at seven, and Maxi woke to the stunning news of Janet Orson’s brutal murder—Jack’s widow, stabbed to death during the night on the grounds of the exclusive Beverly Hills Hotel. No witnesses, no murder weapon found, no motive known, just the enigmatic connection once again, as with Carlotta and herself, to Jack Nathanson.
Janet Orson’s body was discovered just after six this morning by a room-service waiter bringing coffee and the newspapers to bungalow 16. The Associated Press quoted a preliminary statement from the detectives heading up the investigation, saying tracks of blood smeared across the threshold of the bungalow suggested the victim was killed on the portico, then dragged inside. Her body was found just inside the entryway; the front door had been closed and locked.
A key to bungalow 16 was found on the floorboards of the veranda outside. The night manager on duty told deputies that he had given Ms. Orson her key, along with her messages, when she had arrived back at the hotel at about 1:10 this morning. It was assumed the killer used that key to open the door to the bungalow, or perhaps Ms. Orson had opened it herself before she was attacked—the key was being tested for fingerprints.
Driving west on Sunset Boulevard, Maxi picked up her cell phone and put in a call to her old friend Alison Pollock, the manager of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Alison told her to come by, of course she would make time for her. She turned up the sweeping drive that led to the hotel’s lavish front entrance, where a green-uniformed parking attendant opened the door of her Corvette. “How long will you be, Ms. Poole?” he asked.
“No more than fifteen minutes,” Maxi said. “Please leave the car up here instead of taking it down to the garage—I’m going to need it in a hurry.” She handed him some bills, and hustled up the long red carpet into the lobby, then down the marble staircase to Alison Pollock’s office.
Mrs. Pollock was a large, handsome woman in her fifties with a perennial tan and lustrous dark hair swept up in a loose chignon. She greeted Maxi with a hug, then guided her to one of the leather couches in her comfortable office. Frowning gravely, she asked Maxi what she knew about the terrible murder that had taken place on the grounds of her beloved hotel the night before.
“No more than you do, I’m afraid,” Maxi responded. “But I don’t think it was a copycat crime at all. Because I don’t think it was Meg Davis who killed Jack Nathanson, or Carlotta Ricco, or attacked me.”
“But everything points to that poor, unstable girl,” Alison said. “The cross, the witchcraft business—”
“Ali, I’m the only person alive who has seen that killer, and even though he or she was in complete disguise, I’m betting my life that it wasn’t Meg Davis. If it was, then I’d have nothing to fear,” Maxi said. “But I believe the killer is still out there, and after me for some reason, something to do with my connection to Jack… and I’m scared.”
“How can I help?” Alison asked.
“I know you can’t let me into the bungalow; it’s a crime scene,” Maxi answered. “But let me have a copy of Janet Orson’s phone records from the time she moved in here on Sunday. I’ll take it back to the newsroom and check the numbers against the cross directory, see if anything looks unusual. I doubt this was a random strike—nobody’s even suggesting robbery. I think the killer knew exactly where Janet was staying, and was waiting for her to come home.”
Alison picked up her phone and buzzed the switchboard. She asked that the records of all calls that went out from bungalow 16 since Sunday be brought to her office.
“Can you get a copy of the messages that came in for her as well?” Maxi asked.
“No, I’m sorry,” Alison said. “We’re going to install voice mail, but the system’s not in yet—for now, we still take messages the old-fashioned way, handwritten on message slips.”
“No carbons?”
“No, it’s never been our policy to log incoming messages,” Alison said. “The switchboard puts calls through to the rooms, or the dining room, the beauty salon, the Polo Lounge, the gym, pool, wherever the guest leaves word to have calls forwarded. And when guests are out, they might call in to have their messages read to them, or they just pick up their written slips at the desk when they get back.” Maxi made a mental note to find out whether the detectives had found any message slips in bungalow 16.
“Janet Orson did have her calls screened,” Alison went on. “That’s a service we offer. The switchboard operator asks who’s calling, then plugs into the room to see if the guest is in and wants to take the call, then either puts the caller through or takes a message.”
“But no records of those calls either?”
“No records,” Alison confirmed.
Maxi could see anguish etched on Ali Pollock’s face. She’d known Janet Orson for years. Janet had often breakfasted at the Polo Lounge with the industry crowd, and she’d hosted charity fundraisers at the hotel, as well as luncheons and dinners for friends and business associates. Alison had made it a point to come in to work on Sunday afternoon, she told Maxi, to welcome Janet, and to make sure that she was comfortably settled.
“Maxi, dear,” she said, “until this horror is cleared up, I’d like to give you a suite here. I think it would be a good idea for you to stay with us until that killer is apprehended. You may not be safe in your house.”
For a minute, both women reflected uneasily that Janet Orson hadn’t even been safe at the world-famous, heavily staffed Beverly Hills Hotel. “I don’t know,” Maxi said. “I definitely don’t want to stay alone at home tonight. I have a houseguest, Carlotta Ricco’s son, but he’s going back to school this afternoon. He’s a star baseball player at his college, and he likes to keep a baseball bat with him to exercise his wrists. That’s what saved me on Monday night. He scared the killer off, he and Yukon.”
There was a knock on the office door, and Alison’s assistant came in with the phone records. Maxi looked at the printout— thirty-four calls made from bungalow 16 on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
“Thanks, Ali,” she said. “And call me if you think of anything that might help—anything at all.”
As Maxi drove the short distance to Century City, she pondered how to approach Meg Davis’s mother to coax from her any clues that would point the way to the macabre Black Sabbat cross. Of course it was logical to assume that with all the publicity surrounding these crimes, anyone with information about the cross would contact authorities, but Maxi well knew that very often people, for their own reasons, were afraid to get involved.
It had occurred to her that perhaps more than one of those crosses had been made for Black Sabbat. Sometimes a film company will order an item in quantity for different purposes, like the seven pairs of ruby shoes made for Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, or the dozen identical pairs of sunglasses bought for Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Terminator movies. Consulting the Black Sabbat crew list that Richard was working from, Maxi reached Tyler Scheibel, the property master on the film, who told her that only one cross was made for Black Sabbat, a one-of-a-kind art piece. He said the director had been specific about what he wanted the cross to look like and to feel like, and the prop master knew they’d never find such an item for sale. One of his assistants located an artist in Boston who worked in hammered metals, and the film company commissioned the cross—the artist was told to make it look solid, glitzy, and lethal. He fabricated the piece of silver-plated tempered steel, with luminous, multiple colors forged to the alloy. Because it was so distinctive, that cross made a very strong statement in Black Sabbat. Scheibel told Maxi that he was shocked to see the prop resurface in such horrendous circumstances.
At Sally Shine’s apartment building, notorious now as the site where actress Meg Davis had committed suicide the day before, a moving van was parked at the curb, and a few curiosity seekers stood outside, looking up to the terrace on the nineteenth floor, some snapping pictures. Poor Mrs. Shine, Maxi thought. How heartbroken she must be.
Upstairs, the door to the apartment was ajar, and Maxi saw moving men busily packing dishes, sealing and marking boxes, hoisting furniture. Mrs. Shine came to the door and led her inside. “We’ll go into Meggie’s room where we can talk,” she said. “The detectives won’t allow us to move anything out of there yet.” She closed the door behind them, and they settled on a white wicker settee.
“It’s a beautiful room,” Maxi said quietly, looking around at the queen-size bed with its pretty aqua comforter and multitude of pillows, the matching drapes, the overstuffed flower-print chair and ottoman, and the waxed-pine dresser, topped with a beautiful old Bible and a profusion of candles.
“I don’t know what to do with her things,” Sally said with a sigh.
“Mrs. Shine—”
“Please call me Sally,” she said. Maxi sensed that the woman almost welcomed the distraction she was providing.
“Sally… Did you see the cross they’re talking about, the one Meg bought at the auction?”
“Yes, I saw it on top of her dresser the morning after she bought it, and I think she took it with her when she went out that day. But I know she didn’t—”
“I know that, too,” Maxi interrupted gently. “But the cross is the key. Do you have any idea what happened to it?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been over and over that with the detectives. I just don’t know. Meggie was reclusive, especially since that man’s funeral—” Sally seemed to remember then that Maxi had been married to Jack Nathanson. “I’m sorry if—”
“Don’t be,” Maxi said, putting a reassuring hand on the woman’s arm. “I’m more sorry for your pain. Can you tell me who some of Meg’s friends were?”
“No. She never talked about any friends; no one ever called here for her….”
Maxi could see that Sally Shine was about to weep. “I’m going to let you get back to your work,” she said, “because the sooner you’re out of here, the sooner you’ll begin to heal, I think. I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
They walked out of the bedroom and through the living room, where Alex Shine was supervising the movers. He was a big man, good-looking, with salt-and-pepper hair and strong hands. He looked competent, Maxi noted, and caring, and comforting. She was glad that Meg’s mother had him to lean on. At the door, she handed Sally one of her cards and asked her to call if she thought of anything that might be helpful.
“Ms. Poole… Maxi,” Sally half whispered, “I’d like to ask you something.”
“Of course,” Maxi said, hesitating in the doorway.
“Last night on the news, your reporter said he’d talked to some of the people who had worked on Black Sabbat, and they suggested that Meggie was… was abused by Jack Nathanson.”
“Yes,” Maxi said.
“Is he going to be following up on that? Talking to other members of the company?” she asked tremulously.
“I don’t know,” Maxi replied. “If the detectives find that Meg is no longer a posthumous suspect, and I feel certain that will happen as soon as their testing is completed, then there’ll be much less interest in her.”
“I hope so,” Sally said. “It would be horrible if all that were dug up.”
Maxi looked at her carefully. “Did you… know?”
The woman looked away. After a long moment, she directed her gaze back at Maxi. “No,” she said. “But I should have known. I think if I’d wanted to, I would have known.”