As Gwendolyn waited for Cary Grant’s butler to open the door, she eyed the check in her hand and felt her resolve start to wane. She wished she’d given herself a moment before knocking, just to be sure.
The door swung open and Gwendolyn was taken aback to find Grant stand there—and he was even more attractive in person. It made her think of that scene from Notorious when he and Ingrid Bergman got around the Breen Office’s “No screen kiss shall last longer than three seconds” edict by kissing and nibbling and hesitating and succumbing again for the three-minute scene that had everyone talking.
“Oh,” she said, momentarily lost for words, “I was expecting the butler.”
“He’s upstairs dealing with a recalcitrant window, so for this morning’s performance, the part of the butler will be played by yours truly.” Grant opened the door wider to reveal that he was dressed in exactly the sort of thing every girl in America would expect: a black velvet smoking jacket with wide, quilted lapels and matching cuffs the color of dark cranberries. “You must be—Guinevere, is it?”
“Gwendolyn.”
“My mistake. Howard does tend to mumble. You’ll find him out in the guesthouse.”
He led her to a spacious sunroom that looked out over the pool and the guesthouse. Just as he was about to open the door for her, he stopped. “Can you do me a favor?”
She wondered if any woman in the past fifteen years had said no to that question, then noticed him fidgeting with the buttons of his smoking jacket. Oh my goodness, does Cary Grant actually get nervous? “Surely.”
“Howard and I are very good friends, but he has three other places in LA he can go to. Enough is enough.”
She winked at him. “I’ll see what I can do.”
When she stepped onto the tiled patio, the front door of the guesthouse slid open and Hughes emerged into the late-summer sun. His face had filled out and he’d managed to develop something resembling a tan. He offered her a seat.
“I came to return this.” She pushed the check across the glass tabletop between them.
He pushed it back toward her. “I have a strict no-refund policy.”
“Listen,” Gwendolyn said, “I’m bowled over by your generosity, but I can’t—”
“Of course you can. Shall I call for tea? Or are you more of a coffee girl? Something stronger, perhaps? Cary’s wet bar is stocked better than the Biltmore Bowl.”
“I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t feel comfortable accepting this money.”
He seemed genuinely confused. “You want to open your own store, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
His smile was charming, but dangerously rakish.
“Does it really matter where the funds come from?” His voice was Don Juan smooth now.
“It matters a great deal.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been around long enough to know that money like this never comes without strings.”
“Strings, huh?” A gold square box engraved with an intertwined pair of H’s sat on the patio table. Hughes flipped it open and offered her one of the cigarettes inside. She shook her head, but he took one and lit it. “Precisely what sort of strings do you think they are?”
“I can rattle off half a dozen without even thinking.”
“I’m listening.”
“Lana Turner, Yvonne de Carlo, Linda Darnell, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse.”
“Ah! Those sorts of strings.” The scars slicing his face distorted his smile, but it was still remarkably disarming.
Gwendolyn could feel the heat of a blush flaring out from under her. “I’m just trying to avoid unnecessary entanglements.”
His smile became a giggle, which he tried to suppress—halfheartedly, it seemed. She was on the verge of standing when he said,
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh.” He tilted toward her. “If I could convince you that my motivations were not about tempting you into the sack, would you accept it then?”
This’ll be worth the cab fare. “Give it your best shot.”
“I have to warn you, it’s not what girls like you want to hear.”
Girls like me? She gestured for him to continue.
“The thing is . . . you’re just too . . . old.”
Gwendolyn fought to regain her composure. Howard Hughes will bed anything in a skirt, but not me? Because I’m too old? At thirty-seven?
Howard chuckled nervously. “You look like you want to stab me in the throat.”
“Do you blame me?”
“I didn’t tell you that lightly, but I wanted you to know my intentions are honorable.” He paused for a moment. “There’s another reason I want you to have that money.”
She withdrew a cigarette from his golden box and held it out for him. “Should I brace myself?”
He lit it for her with a matching lighter. “You could easily have handed Linc Tattler over to Bugsy Siegel to save your own skin, but you didn’t, and I wanted to show my appreciation.”
“What’s any of that got to do with you?”
“Before your boyfriend left town, he came to see me. He told me about a file box belonging to Leilah and Clem that had come into his possession. He said it had dozens of index cards detailing all her clients. He said my name was in the box, and he rattled off enough dates and girls to convince me. He said he was planning on taking it out of the country with him, and then he was going to burn it.” Howard raised an eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you know if he did?”
Gwendolyn wondered why Linc would go to the trouble of taking that box with him if he was only going to burn it later. Was it insurance in case someone had arranged to have him stopped at the border? She decided it was impossible to know at this point, and with Siegel gone, what did it matter? She shook her head.
He grimaced. “Pity. As far as I can tell, he paid a visit to every chump in the box and alerted them to how the O’Roarkes had been keeping records.”
“Bugsy Siegel was real keen to track Linc down,” Gwendolyn said.
Howard nodded soberly. “I suspect Siegel somehow knew Linc had all that information and wanted it to blackmail every mover and shaker in town.”
Gwendolyn fell back into her chair and started to fan herself with her gloves. Why didn’t Linc tell me all this?
“The point is,” Howard continued, “Linc kept his trap shut, Siegel never tracked him down, and you didn’t lead him to Linc. So this here five grand was my clumsy way of saying thank you without having to bring up all this sordidness.”
He was looking at her so intensely that Gwendolyn had to turn away. Her eyes fell on the check. Five grand. Together with my Licketysplitter money, Chez Gwendolyn could actually become real. All I have to do is say thank you. And yet somehow she couldn’t convince herself to reach across the table. Providence usually came with consequences.
He slid the check across the glass until it lay in front of her. “Tell you what, how about you take it with you today, stick it someplace safe, then tell me your decision on November second.”
“What’s happening then?”
“It’s when I’ll be conducting the test flight of my Hercules down in Long Beach. I want you to be my guest. Come down, watch the flight, and give me your answer then. How does that sound?”
Gwendolyn was no longer sure she could return the money. “That sounds fair.” She popped open her purse and slid the check inside. “I’ll see you there.”
He fell back into his chair, smiling.
Gwendolyn leaned forward. “And seeing as how you were kind enough to be as blunt as a hammer with me, I must now repay the favor.”
His hand held the gold cigarette lighter halfway to his mouth. It stopped, shaking slightly. “Shoot.”
“It’s Cary.”
“What about him?”
“He wants you to get the hell out.”
* * *
It was a long, steep walk down Benedict Canyon Drive to Sunset, where Gwendolyn would have any hope of flagging down a cab. By the first curve in the road, she wished she had selected more sensible shoes that morning, but how was she to know that she’d be leaving Cary Grant’s house on foot? She wondered, too, if perhaps she shouldn’t have declined Howard’s offer to have Cary’s driver take her back to the Garden. But she needed time to think about what had just happened back there.
It’s not what girls like you want to hear.
She realized this was the first time she’d been rejected because of her age. She didn’t think she looked thirty, let alone thirty-seven, and she certainly didn’t feel any different than she had at twenty-one.
“Gwendolyn Brick,” she declared out loud, “when Howard Hughes thinks you’re too old, you really are past it.”
She dropped her handbag on the sidewalk and plunked her rear end on the edge of the curb, held her face in her hands, and laughed and cried and laughed and cried.