The next morning, Joanna found Gene in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee. To beat the heat, Paul had left for work early. So far, Gene had shown no sign of moving. No packing, no talking about neighborhoods, nothing.
“Coffee?” Gene asked. “I set out the mug you like. Lovely dress, by the way.”
“You like it?”
“Nineteen-forties, right?” Gene said. “Peplum waist and bell sleeves to the elbow. An unusual touch for that era. Paul said you were going out last night. Have fun?”
They’d had fun all right. It had been months since they’d been able to plan a date night knowing Gene wouldn’t be home. After tossing around grand ideas ranging from five-star restaurants to watching His Girl Friday at the Hollywood Theatre, they opted for listening to the organist at the Oaks Park skating rink and following it up with chicken and jojos at the Reel M Inn. She hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time. Best of all, they hadn’t talked about the Stroden case.
“We did. I was surprised to find you home, though. I thought you’d planned to be away.”
“Oh, you know.”
She took her cup to the table. “Gene, out with it.”
He fidgeted with a coffee spoon. He had the same graceful fingers and strong hands Paul did. “What?”
“You’ve been like this the past few days, walking on eggshells.”
He sighed. “I tried to tell Paul yesterday, but we got into sharpening the lathe, and the conversation kind of lost its thread.”
“You should be in a pretty sweet spot now,” Joanna said. “Your name is clear, you’re out of prison, and you have a girlfriend who makes a mean pie.” So far, no memoir had appeared to spoil it, either.
His face fell. “About that…”
“You broke up?”
“She’s an honest woman,” he said earnestly.
“You’re honest, too, now, right?”
He nodded.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Well, Mary Pat Stroden said her brother had the jewels all these years.”
“And?” This morning’s coffee was especially delicious. If Gene and his sweetheart decided to open a cafe, they had a winning combination.
“That’s just it. It isn’t honest, and Melba knows it.”
Joanna set down her cup. “What do you mean?”
“I know you were trying to make the situation easy for me, and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted your house back to yourself. I’m ready to get on with my life, too. But Melba says the situation with the Greffulhe jewels won’t be over until I come clean about it.”
This deserved a second cup. “Want more coffee?” Joanna asked. He shook his head, and, thinking hard, she refilled her mug, topping it off with cream. “Who is this Melba, anyway?”
“Oh, she’s marvelous.” The set of Gene’s expression hadn’t changed, yet a pink glow seemed to suffuse him. “I never thought I’d fall in love. I figured I was a loner for good. And that was fine. Do I sound like an idiot?”
Joanna smiled. “Not at all. I know the feeling.”
“At my age, even.” He shifted his gaze toward the dining room window and flipped the silver coffee spoon between his fingers. “Go figure. Melba—that’s her name—was our getaway driver’s little sister. I’ve known her for years.”
“But she was never part of the life?”
“No. Absolutely not. She worked in a family restaurant out by the docks and picked up the pastry chef part of the job, then opened her own catering business. Strictly legit.”
“Then how does she know Bradley Stroden didn’t steal the emeralds after all?”
“Melba’s a family girl, too, you know. Her brother never had any secrets from her.”
“And her brother knew all about the heist.”
“Oh, yes. I’m afraid it’s almost legendary in my circle.”
“I see your problem.” The coffee roused Joanna’s appetite even while his news dampened it. “So, the fact that the jewels are going back to their owners isn’t enough for her. What does she want? Does she expect you to find the heirs, invite them over for a drink, and admit to having stolen the jewels? What would that change?”
“She says although I might not still be a thief, I’m not being truthful, and that not telling the truth is a kind of stealing, too.”
That sounded like a stretch to Joanna, but she was listening. “Go on.”
“Plus, if the police find out I stole the jewels, I could get in trouble with my parole officer.”
“But you stole them so long ago. It doesn’t count anymore, does it?”
“Stealing them doesn’t count. Keeping stolen property does.”
Gene was a handsome man—fit, handy, and knew how to flatter the ladies. He could find another girlfriend. “Are you sure she’s worth it?”
“I’m sure. I’m positive. Honey, I’ve never felt this way in my life. But she says she won’t be with someone who isn’t truthful.”
“What exactly does she want you to do?”
He set down the coffee spoon and pushed it away. “She wants me to apologize. To Aimee Miller.”
The next afternoon, Joanna was at Tallulah’s Closet, dusting the top of the jewelry display, when Mindy entered, a package under her arm. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the air was thickening. Mindy’s ever-present coat might actually come in handy today.
“You’re here. So soon,” Joanna said.
“You said you wanted it right away.”
Joanna took the bundle from her. “Are you kidding? I’ve been counting the minutes. Did Kelsey at the library get you those articles, too?”
“Yep. Plus, we found the script right after you left and had them overnight it.” As the girl talked, her gaze roamed the store. “We paid extra for the fastest delivery. It sounded like you wouldn’t care.”
“No, I’m glad you did.” She pressed her hands on the weighty package. Inside might well be the key to Bradley and Luke’s murders.
“UCLA said they had the film, too.”
Joanna’s head shot up. “Can we get it?”
“Nope.”
“They won’t lend it?” For a split second, she wondered what it would take to fly to Los Angeles that afternoon.
“They’d lend it—if they had it. They said somebody borrowed it years ago and never brought it back. There was even a note in the file that they’d tried to find the person who checked it out, but it turned out to be a fake name.”
It was getting better and better. Or worse and worse, depending on your perspective. The shop wouldn’t close for another four hours, but maybe Joanna could squeeze in reading between customers. “Thank you so much. I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“I know,” Mindy said.
“So.” Joanna set the wrapped script on the tiki bar. “What will it be? Cash or trade?”
Mindy was caressing the sleeve of a wool crepe evening jacket. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to Pearl and Lucy and get back to you, if that’s all right.”
“For that money, I could dress each of you well. Maybe for the Story Challenge, even.”
Mindy stared but didn’t reply.
“Well, think about it, anyway.” She started to turn back to the script and halted. “Would you guys be open to another research job? I have an idea, but it will depend on what I find here.”
Mindy shrugged. “I guess. Yeah, sure.”
Joanna knew this was as enthusiastic a “yes” as she was going to get. “I’ll be in touch.”
Mindy left, and the store was quiet again. Joanna flipped through her record albums and pulled a June Christie record from its sleeve and set it on the turntable. This would be the perfect soundtrack. As Christie’s languorous voice filled the room, Joanna unwrapped the package from the library.
Two women entered the shop, chatting about a mutual friend. Joanna greeted them, and when they said they were “just looking,” she returned to the script.
It was a fat bundle of typewritten pages bound with two brass fasteners and a manila cover. Starlit Wonder said the title page in capital letters. “Sipriano Productions presents” was typed above the title, and “by Peter Blackburn” was typed below. “UCLA Collections” was stamped in red in the upper right corner, above a handwritten catalog number. In the lower left corner was typed the director’s name.
“Excuse me, but do you have this in a bigger size?” The customer held up a ruffled silk skirt, one of the 1970s pieces Joanna was experimenting with selling. Some customers lifted the hangers of these clothes in disbelief, saying things like, “The principal’s secretary wore this when I was in high school.” The younger crowd was into it, though, and even brought photos of Stevie Nicks and asked about poet’s sleeves.
“Everything we have is one-of-a-kind,” Joanna said. “I do have a dress by the same maker that’s a little bigger.” Regretfully, she closed the script. It would have to wait until tonight.
That night, she sat in bed with the script for Starlit Wonder open in her lap. The rain pounded on the roof and streamed through the gutters. After she’d closed Tallulah’s Closet, she hadn’t had a minute to crack open the script. Now, dinner and chores behind them, Paul lay asleep next to her. Thankfully, he’d always been a heavy sleeper, and when a book kept her awake past his lights out, her reading never bothered him.
The script was as engrossing as any murder mystery. As she read, terse stage directions and setting descriptions unrolled the story as clearly as if she were watching from the front row of a screening room. Despite the Busby Berkeley title, Starlit Wonder was classic film noir. She wished she could see the characters in their Edith Head-designed costumes.
The story opened with a brother and sister unpacking their bags in their furnished garden apartment. They were in Hollywood. The brother placed his portable typewriter on the kitchen table and announced that his career as a novelist was behind him. From now on, he’d be known as a screenwriter. The sister asked him to write her a role and to make it a big one, preferably with a grand love affair and a happy ending. At this point, the script commanded the sister to look wistfully out the window.
It didn’t escape Joanna that the story could have been about Bradley and Mary Pat Stroden. So far.
Starlit Wonder picked up its pace almost immediately. While the brother smoked cigarettes and pounded away at the typewriter, the sister encountered a movie producer in a “meet cute” scene at a pet shop. The sister left with a puppy and the producer’s business card. Soon, one of the studios took her on. At the same time, her relationship with the producer flourished.
Until it didn’t. Halfway through the script, the producer seemed to have an abrupt change of heart and telephoned the sister to break off their relationship. The sister refused to accept it. While a storm raged through the city, the producer drove through the city to the sister’s house in Pasadena, where she had settled once she had her own income. The sister thought he’d come to reconcile, but he stabbed her, ransacked her apartment to make it look like a burglary, and left.
The story’s tension kept Joanna turning the pages until the second death, a poisoning. The brother pinned the murder on the producer and was determined to punish him by poisoning his afternoon whiskey. The brother didn’t live to feel the satisfaction of revenge, because on his way home, distracted, he’d been hit by a car and killed.
Well. She’d always appreciated film noir more for the style than the tortured plot lines.
But, a second murder, a poisoning. The script rested against Joanna’s knees. Bradley Stroden had been poisoned. Coincidence?
She set the script on the nightstand and took up the photocopies of newspaper articles Mindy had ferried from the library. The first was from the Pasadena Star-News in 1953, two years before Starlit Wonder was filmed. It reported that Brigid Blackburn had been stabbed and killed at her home. She was survived by family in Nebraska and by her brother, novelist and screenwriter Peter Blackburn. The police determined she’d had the bad luck to surprise a burglar. Joanna wondered where the Big Sip had been that night and if the police had even bothered to check.
The next clipping was Sipriano’s obituary, dated 1965. He’d died of a massive coronary. No poisoned whiskey. No murder. Sipriano’s death had merited two photos. One, a close-up of the producer, probably a studio portrait, showing a fleshy-cheeked, dark-haired man with charisma that shone even through a photocopy of newsprint. The other was a photo of the funeral. A woman in a black coat and hat with a veil stood near a flower-heaped casket. He’d left a widow, Meredith Sipriano, and several children.
Joanna laid the photocopies on top of the script and folded her hands over her lap. It was conclusive. Luke couldn’t have blackmailed the producer, because the producer was long dead. Yet she was sure Luke was blackmailing someone. Assuming that Starlit Wonder was the hot button, who stood to lose the most from having the film made public?
Sipriano’s wife topped the list. If Sipriano did have an affair and murdered his mistress, his wife would want it hushed up. From what Callie Rampton and Mary Pat had said, she was possessive to a fault. She’d never want her dead husband’s name besmirched. Peter Blackburn also needed to be tracked down. In fact, everyone involved with the movie merited research.
She took in her small bedroom’s dresser topped with a mannequin’s bust draped in necklaces, the chair with Paul’s work shirt dangling from it, the 1920s painting of a young woman in a dropped-yoke green dress. The bedside light barely touched them with its yellow glow. Outside, the rain continued its strumming, but in here she was warm and dry.
And safe. Her life was settled, content. They hadn’t heard from the police. She didn’t know if Roscoe had found another copy of the memoir or had wormed anything out of Mary Pat about Gene and the Greffulhe jewels. That shoe had yet to drop. Tonight, though, her life was peaceful.
But the rest of the world wasn’t so calm. Anger, jealousy, and greed sparked people to do all sorts of gruesome things. They ruined lives, including their own. Just as in Starlit Wonder.
She clicked off the lamp. Hopefully, the Book Bunnies had a few hours on their hands.