Chapter 35

I LEFT THE Carlyle through the revolving door and there was Mr. Bavaria, waiting in front of the silver Lincoln Town Car. He was on his cell phone. When he saw me, he nodded and said, “She’s here now, sir . . . Yes, sir.” He clicked off and approached me. “Mr. Yarborough instructed me to take you wherever you’d like,” he said.

I thought about it for a moment.

“Take me to the nearest big video store,” I said, “and then back to the Dakota.”

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, carrying a bag full of DVDs, I unlocked the door to my apartment. It was pleasantly warm. The glazier had not yet replaced the living room window, but he had patched the hole to keep out the late October chill, and he had left a scrawled note saying he would put in the new glass tomorrow afternoon. I took off my shoes and picked up the phone to punch in a familiar number. When Nancy came on the line, I thanked her again for meeting me at the police station, and for bringing Arnold Rose.

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

Reflexively, I began to whisper, too. “Yes, he is,” I said. “I was very impressed—but why am I whispering?” I shook my head at the absurdity of it, resumed my normal tone of voice and asked, “Are you two seeing each other tonight?”

“No, he’s preparing for a major trial.”

“Then come over here. I picked up a stack of Teresa Gleason’s old movies.”

“Teresa Gleason from your short list of suspects? What will we be looking for?” she asked, her voice back at its normal level.

“Like pornography, we’ll know it when we see it.”

“Oh!” Nancy said. She began whispering again. “Arnold found out from his source that somebody telephoned Serena in her office about half an hour before she was killed. Serena’s secretary told officers that the call sounded personal. When Serena left the office, the secretary thought she was going to the bathroom because she didn’t take her purse, just a book of matches.”

“Good work, Nancy Drew. Thank your Ned Nickerson for me.”

On the other end of the line, I heard Nancy laugh. “Ned Nickerson was never my type,” she said. “I prefer brains to brawn. I’ll be there at seven.”

“I’ll order Chinese.”

“No MSG.”

“Cross my heart,” I promised. “I think I’ll invite Penny Cavanaugh, too.”

“Good idea,” she said. “I’m curious to meet Detective Neanderthal’s aunt.”

“Do you really dislike Matt Phoenix as much as you seemed to this afternoon?”

“Of course not. I was just being imperious on your behalf—letting ‘da fuzz’ know you have friends who will not stand for you being abused. Actually, I think your detective is very sexy,” she said. “He’s a little on the grim side, but you can fix that.”

She hung up before I could respond. I called Penny and told her my plan.

“I’ll be there,” she said. “Can I bring anything?”

“Absolutely not. Do you like Chinese food?”

“Adore it.”

“Seven o’clock, then,” I said.

The phone rang as soon as I put it down. I picked it up and heard Harrison’s voice asking, “Doll. Are you all right?” before I could even say “hello.” “I’m fine,” I said, flooding with warmth at his concern. “So you’ve heard about Serena?”

“The show’s producer called,” he said. “The prick wanted to be sure I’d have the scripts in on time.” He let out a disgusted snort. There was sadness in his voice as he added, “I wonder if anybody in that place even cares about her.”

“I think she was killed by the same person who killed Damon.”

“I don’t. Serena was a troubled lady—into some risky stuff. Told me she was doing the bar scene to meet new guys. I warned her . . .” He expelled a sigh full of frustration, then took a calming breath. “They told me you found her, and that the cops questioned you.”

“They thought they caught the killer—me—but Kitty Leigh confirmed the two of us were together in her dressing room at the time Serena was killed, so they let me go home.”

“You’ve had a rough day, sweet face. Want to have dinner? Agata loves an excuse to cook a civilized meal of more than one course.”

“No, thanks. Nancy’s coming over here, and a new friend—Penny Cavanaugh—is joining us. We’re having Chinese takeout and a film festival.”

There was something else I wanted to say, but I hesitated. It seemed a little crass under the circumstances, but I decided I had to ask. “Will you take over Trauma Center officially now?”

“I suppose so.”

“If it doesn’t work out, you can always come back to Love.”

“Let’s see what shakes out. I’ll talk to you soon. Have fun tonight. What are you girls doing, giving yourselves a Mel Gibson orgy?”

“Don’t I wish,” I laughed. “No, we’re watching old Teresa Gleason movies.”

He was silent for a beat. “If I remember, she was a better actress than the lousy pictures she was in.”

BY THE TIME I took a shower, changed and set up three portable snack tables in front of the big-screen TV in the den, it was nearly seven o’clock. Nancy, who was never late, arrived first, carrying a bottle of wine. She had changed into designer sweats, but was still wearing the strand of pearls. Penny arrived two minutes later, simultaneously with the delivery man from the Chinese restaurant. She was carrying a thin package, wrapped in crisp white tissue paper.

I introduced Nancy to Penny and then paid the delivery man.

Penny and I took the food into the den and Nancy went to the pantry for glasses. Nancy rejoined us in the den just as Penny handed me the small package. “I have no shame,” I said, ripping off the tissue paper. “I love presents.”

“It’s a copy of that old Judith Viorst poetry book I told you about.”

I looked at the title, and showed the cover to Nancy. “How Did I Get to Be 40 and Other Atrocities.”

Penny said, “I know you two aren’t anywhere near forty yet, but I was only twenty-five when I read it for the first time and loved it. Just read the top of page forty-one, you’ll see her sense of humor.”

I flipped through the little book and found the page. It was a piece called “The Sensuous Woman.” I read the first few lines aloud:

I’m giving up nice and becoming a sensuous woman. The kind of woman who wouldn’t wear bedsocks to bed. I’m giving up going to places like Saks and the cleaners And going wherever my appetites lead me instead.

 

“Words to live by,” said Nancy as she eased the cork out of the bottle of wine. She lifted one eyebrow at me and said with significance, “Memorize that piece, Morgan. It’s time to forget the lightbulbs and buy candles again.”

“Ignore her,” I said. “She’s in love so she wants everybody else to be, too.”

“There’s nothing better than loving someone,” Penny said softly.

I agreed, but it wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. “Thank you for the book, Penny. I know I’m going to enjoy it.” I began to open the array of dishes I’d ordered for dinner. Nancy spotted the stack of Teresa Gleason movies. “Let’s see . . . What’ll we watch first? We’ve got Pirate Queen, Pirate Island, Bonnie Annie—”

“That one’s about the real female pirate, Anne Bonney,” I said.

Nancy went on, “Lady Godiva’s Daughter, The Red Head from Montana, Fool’s Gold, Belle of the Comstock Lode, and Hot Ice.”

“I particularly want to see her action scenes,” I said. “She was supposed to have done a lot of her own stunts.”

I pulled the double-wide ottoman in front of the sofa from its usual place beneath the window—the now-shuttered window. Penny scooped portions of cashew chicken, beef with oyster sauce, steamed giant shrimp with fresh garlic, chow mein, and fried rice onto plates and added an egg roll apiece. Nancy poured the wine and passed out chopsticks. I put in the first DVD.

Like teenage girls, we plopped down against the cushions, put our feet up on the ottoman, and ate while we watched the opening scenes of Pirate Queen.

Young, flame-haired Teresa Gleason was take-your-breath-away gorgeous in Technicolor. She burst into her first scene swinging on a rope from the mast of her pirate ship down onto the deck of the helpless vessel the pirates had captured. As soon as her feet touched the deck, she was slashing her way through a violent sword fight. It was one long shot from the top of the mast to the middle of the fight, with no cuts, no cutaways. No possible stunt double; that was all Teresa.

“Yeow,” Nancy said, swallowing a mouthful of chow mein, “I don’t think I’d want her mad at me.”

“She still fences,” Penny added. “A couple of weeks ago I recognized her coming out of the fitness academy across the street from Natasha’s, carrying foils and a mask. She’s in great shape.”

“If Damon had been run through with a rapier, mystery solved,” I said.

When the fighting scenes stopped, the dialogue was so bad I hit “Fast Forward” until the next battle scene. More swinging and slashing, and a spectacular dive over the side of the pirate ship. I was sure that the diver was a double, but it was clearly Teresa herself doing all the underwater swimming.

We’d had enough of Pirate Queen.

We watched selected parts of three more bad costume pictures. In the DVD narration that accompanied Belle of the Comstock Lode we learned that to prepare for the movie, Teresa had become an expert pistol and rifle marksman.

“It sounds like she became the man women used to want to marry,” Nancy joked. “So why did she end up twenty years later looking whipped?”

“Damon slapped some of his women around,” I said, “but I never heard that he hit Teresa. The story is she was a huge asset to him when he was starting out. She elevated Damon socially, got him invited to lots of A-list gatherings where he made industry connections he couldn’t have gotten near without her popularity and social contacts.”

“Men have all sorts of ways to hurt the women they’re supposed to love,” Penny said quietly. “I see a lot of well-known socialites who’ve been devastated psychologically by their husband’s cheating on them, belittling them. Sometimes I spend a facial hour not just restoring skin tone, but trying to persuade a client that she’s a person of value.”

“I can’t understand why a woman would stay in a marriage like that,” I said.

“From what I see, most of them stay for the money and the social position,” Nancy commented. “But in my opinion, women who sell themselves like that deserve what they get. I’m not sympathetic to weaklings.”

It was nine-fifteen and we had just finished the last of the egg rolls when I slipped Hot Ice into the machine. Unlike most of Teresa’s movies, which were set either on the high seas or in the Old West but shot on studio back lots, this picture was a contemporary caper, and had been filmed mostly on the streets of Los Angeles. It was obvious from the opening scenes—which were shown without the intrusion of credits—that the filmmakers were attempting to make a movie that was a lot better than its low budget would suggest.

In it, Teresa plays a desperate young woman who thinks she is stealing diamonds from the man who destroyed her father’s business and crushed his spirit, but the gems actually belong to a professional killer. Fleeing from the killer, Teresa loses valuable escape time when she rescues a six-year-old boy who is being badly abused by his stepfather. At nail-biting risk to her own life, Teresa decides to reunite the little boy—whose name is Jeremy!—with the biological father who has been searching for him ever since the boy’s trashy mother and vicious stepfather stole him away.

“It’s a pretty corny story but I like it,” Nancy said. She passed some Kleenex to Penny and to me. We were both teary-eyed as we watched the scene where Teresa discovers terrible bruises all over the child’s body.

“The dialogue is very good,” I said, sniffling. “She named her own son Jeremy—I wonder if she named him after the character in this movie?”

We watched Hot Ice all the way through, without making fun of it. At the climax, when Teresa saves little Jeremy, but is shot by the killer, the three of us cried out in dismay. “Oh, no,” Penny moaned. “She doesn’t deserve to die!” Shock was followed by sighs of relief as we learned Teresa would survive the wound—and would probably end up happy with little Jeremy and his real father.

“That’s what a movie’s supposed to do,” Nancy said as the final scene faded out. “Give us characters to like and worry about.”

I looked at my watch. “And let us spend most of eighty-five minutes not thinking about what’s going on in our own lives.”

“Amen to that,” Penny said.

The credits began to roll. I wanted to see who wrote Hot Ice. When I saw the credit flash on the screen, I sat up so fast I almost spilled half a glass of wine.

“What’s the matter?” Nancy asked, taking the wineglass out of my hand. Penny stopped cleaning up our dinner debris.

“Look at this,” I said. I pushed “Rewind,” searched backward to the writer credit and pushed “Pause.” The three of us stared at the words that were frozen on the screen:

“Written by Harrison Landers.”