SEVEN
As soon as I got home, I called Petra.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m just leaving the office.”
“What was that text about?”
“You know about the second dead girl?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “What does that have to do with me?”
I could hear her shifting something, and then a car door closed. “Brian met with Alexa Levine today,” she said. “He’s going to write the story himself.”
“Which story?”
“The Langley story,” she said. “Brian’s going to write about the connection between Eleanor’s murder and the murder of these two girls.”
“Like hell he is! That was my angle!”
“I’m sure a lot of people have drawn the same conclusion, Hailey.” I could hear the sounds of Hollywood in the background, cars and arguing. A snatch of music played. “He did say something about Theo returning to Los Angeles, though. Weren’t you the one who told him that?”
I rubbed my eyes. “What did Alexa say?”
“She’s interested. I only heard part of their conversation.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Windhall has always fascinated me,” she said. “And I’ve been following your pieces for a few years. When I got a job working for the Lens, I didn’t think it would be quite like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like the rest of Hollywood,” she said.
“Is this your first job in Los Angeles?”
“Not even close.”
“Look, I appreciate the call,” I said. “Thanks for looking out for me. I’m not really in a position to help you, though. I’m on my way out. My contract’s almost up.”
“Maybe I could help you. We could research this story together.”
“Thanks, but no. I always write my stories alone.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
After hanging up with Petra, I went to my office in the greenhouse out back, taking the box of artifacts with me. When I inherited the house, one of my first orders of business had been to clean out the greenhouse and convert it into my office. It held some fond memories for me, because after my time in the hospital, I had moved in with Gran, and she would potter around in the greenhouse, smoking cigarettes and poking at various plants. She didn’t have any real talent for gardening, and most of the time, plants would grow for an inch or so before withering and dying. But her lack of talent didn’t seem to bother her. She’d go on watering plants that had died months before as though she never even noticed their shriveled stalks.
As such, the greenhouse had been filled with clutter when I inherited it. The shelves were lined with cracked terra-cotta pots, the tables in the back held one or two dusty urns, and half a dozen broken lattices were leaned up against the walls. I had spent three days emptying pots filled with dirt and scabbed algae, then lost a week scrubbing mold off the windows. I’d salvaged one or two glazed pots, which I’d repurposed for Kentia palms.
With Madeleine’s help, I’d taken out the old flagstone floor and replaced it with brick, then removed all the cracked panes of glass and moved my grandmother’s kilim rug collection into the newly renovated space. From then on, it was my office, and I spent more time in there than in any other part of my house.
Settling in at my desk, the large wooden table that had once held my grandmother’s plants, I thought about how it wasn’t the first time I had seen things from Windhall. But if everything had really come out of Theo’s house, then it was the biggest single collection that I had come across so far. Most of the items I had seen in the past were offered like illicit goods, because that’s what they were: a pilfered fork, a napkin stitched with the Windhall monogram, a book discreetly tucked into the pocket of a onetime dinner guest. Each item was interesting in its own right, but they were all one-dimensional: none of the items did anything to illuminate the bigger picture, or give me an idea of what life at Windhall was like.
I should have been more excited about the haul, but the news about Brian stealing my story had taken the wind out of my sails. Now, sitting at my table in the greenhouse, staring at a pile of lifeless objects, I felt hopeless. I had been chasing a fantasy for years, and I had finally run out of time. If losing my writing contract didn’t signify that, then the crumbling roof and the rotten foundations of my grandmother’s house certainly did.
I picked up one of the Windhall forks and then reached over and picked up the locket. Keeping hair in a necklace was definitely a spooky old Victorian custom, but it wasn’t the first time I had seen it. There was a store on Melrose that specialized in strange old memorabilia, and they had drawers full of them. As I picked up items and set them out on my desk, I remembered the satchel. I had left it in my car.
It was unlikely that the satchel would contain anything of value. Working with Thierry had taught me all the old tricks: a con artist, some distant member of the family, would arrive before Thierry and his team got in. He’d slip a decent knockoff of a lesser-known work of art in with the rest of the garbage, and he’d materialize just as Thierry and his team were discovering it. One of the crew might notice it and estimate some value, but the con artist would insist that it wasn’t worth anything. This denial would only make Thierry’s guy more certain, and he’d work himself up into a state of excitement, thinking of the commission. Sometimes, there was even a headline to go along with it: LOST WORK OF ART FOUND IN HOARDER’S BASEMENT. You can imagine what the auction would be like.
Since Thierry knew his Caillebottes from his Morisots, he was always able to nip these scams in the bud, but he hadn’t examined the satchel. And he didn’t know that much about Theo, so I was going to have to rely on my own judgment about the provenance of the satchel.
Once I returned to the desk in my office, I brought the lamp over and examined the bag. It was good-quality leather, probably bespoke, and still intact, despite all the mold and ill treatment. I tested the seams. It was a solid piece of workmanship, which meant that I was going to have to force the lock if I didn’t want to destroy it to get inside.
Before I turned my attention to the lock, I rooted around in the box to ensure that the key was really missing. My search didn’t turn anything up, and I doubted that a key would have made a difference anyway: the lock was so rusty that it seemed unlikely that a key would have been able to open it.
The satchel had a leather flap held down by twin buckles. The lock holding it shut was in between them, stitched into the main flap and the base underneath. After picking at the lock for a few minutes with a screwdriver, I abandoned the project and grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors.
I cut a small section from the top flap and freed the satchel from its lock. The buckles on either side of the lock were rusted shut, but I was able to get them open without destroying the bag further. I gently opened the main flap, then looked inside.
There was a bit of ink on the inside edge of the flap, as though a pen had leaked on the leather and the owner had never managed to get it out. I picked through the rest of the satchel—it was filled with writing implements, pens and a moldy pad of paper, some personal memorabilia, and a few coins. I took out an old set of keys and put them to the side; I would try to figure out what they opened some other time.
In the back section of the satchel was a notebook, most of which was waterlogged and stuck with mold. I coughed as a few spores drifted up through the air, and then found a book stuffed in one of the pockets. It was Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
I turned the satchel over again to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything, and noticed that there was some writing on the inside flap. Theo is a big fat jerk! it read. The writing was faded and slightly blurred. It was only a small consolation to know that the satchel did, indeed, belong to Theo.
The notebook proved mostly worthless, since all the pages were fused together. They fell apart when I tried to unstick them. The writing was completely washed away by the years and whatever moisture had gotten to the satchel.
Disappointed, I turned my attention to the copy of Ethan Frome. The pages were stuck together there, too, but with the aid of a letter opener, I managed to slide some of them apart. A photograph fell onto my desk, and I picked it up.
In the photo were a man and a woman, dancing in front of a row of buildings. He was ducking his head and grinning, and her back was to the camera, but I could tell by their pose that they weren’t very good dancers; they were just doing it for fun. The buildings in the background were cream-colored Victorian terrace houses, with lace curtains in the windows and a rocking chair on each porch. Blue hydrangeas lined the sidewalk in front of the houses, and in the background, an old woman peered at the two dancers. They didn’t seem to know that their photograph was being taken.
The photo was old and square, faded, probably taken sometime in the ’60s. I made a mental note to ask Marty if he recognized the type of camera that had been used, and when it might have been taken. The lens must have been damaged; in the upper right-hand corner of the photograph, was a small mark like a crooked, backward J.
I turned the photo over and saw that someone had scrawled a quick phrase in blue ink: Lucy’s with Connie. Beneath that, a serial strip of letters and numbers that read 021664GFNVT. There was nothing else to elucidate the identity of the dancers, or where the photo might have been taken.
I flipped the photo over and stared hard at the man. With a shock, I realized that I was looking at Theo. He was much older than he had been in other photographs that I had seen, but then again, all the other pictures had been taken before the murder and resulting trial. His skin was tanned and lined, but the smile was unmistakable.
The woman was harder to make out, since I couldn’t see her face. She was as tall as Theo, but whether that was the result of genetics or high heels was impossible to say: the photo cut off the dancers at mid-thigh. Her dark hair was pinned at the base of her neck and she wore a multicolored dress.
Connie. Could have been short for Constance, or Consuela. Regardless, it was impossible to say if she had anything to do with Eleanor’s murder, because she could have been someone Theo had met after leaving Los Angeles.
The satchel and its contents had a mild amount of interest, but without a bloody murder weapon, as Thierry had suggested at Kent’s, I was no better off than I was before. I left everything on my desk, then turned off the lights in the office. After a moment’s hesitation, I went back and grabbed the photograph of Theo and Connie.
The dregs of a bottle of Jameson sat on my kitchen counter. I looked at the bottle for a long, hard moment, then grabbed it, too, and took it into my bedroom.
The first shot burned, and the second warmed my chest. I felt magnanimous and numb, the way I usually did with alcohol. After sitting on the edge of my bed for a moment and staring into space, I took out my phone.
I had looked at Leland’s phone number so many times that I had committed it to memory. If he ever did call me, I would probably be too wracked with anxiety to answer it, but now, edged toward comfortable alcoholic numbness, I wasn’t afraid. For a moment, I thought about emailing Theo directly, but he hadn’t responded to my last email, so I decided to text Leland, instead.
I want to talk about Connie, I typed. Tell Theo I know. I thought about sending him a picture of the photograph, but then decided against it.
The message sat there for a moment, innocuous and disposable, and then I hit “send.”
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because my dreams were gently interspersed with the sounds of harps, strings, and then a plaintive trumpet. Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from Chinatown; it was my ringtone. I blinked awake and rolled over and found my phone under my bed. The call was from a private number. My heart jumped. I knew it must be Leland. I picked up.
“Are you ready to talk?” I asked.
“Have you found him yet?” It was a woman’s voice, one that was vaguely familiar.
“Found who?” I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. The smell of mildew had crept into my bedroom, and the cold had seeped in under the door. “Who is this?”
“Have you found Theo yet?” the voice said impatiently. There was something pleasing about the way she spoke, husky with rounded sibilance. I couldn’t place it, but I knew that I had heard it somewhere, like seeing a bit actor in a film. “You are still looking for him, aren’t you?”
“Tell me how I know you.”
“Never mind about me,” she said. “Tell me if you’ve found Theo.”
“Is this Connie?”
“What?”
“I’m not in the mood for playing games,” I said. I glanced at my watch. “It’s past one in the morning. Good night.”
I hung up. A moment later, my phone began to ring again.
“Listen to me, Mr. Hailey,” the same woman said, and I could hear the taut wire in her voice. “This question happens to be worth a lot of money to me. I know that you’re about to lose your job, and your house is in a bad state of disrepair.”
I sat up.
“Do I have your attention now?”
“If you were trying to threaten me, you’d come directly to my house,” I said.
“I already did,” she said, then laughed. “I stopped by earlier, but you weren’t home. If I were trying to threaten you, believe me, you’d know it.”
“What do you want?”
“I can answer some of your questions,” she said. “Theo is back, for one. You’re not going to find him by buying up his old junk.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Have you been following me?”
“I can tell you how he’s connected to all those dead girls. Have you found out who Ben is?”
“Look, I’m done—”
“I can pay you for your time, but I need to know if you’re worth the investment. Now, have you found Theo?”
“What makes you think I’m interested in working for you?”
She cleared her throat. “Your house is falling apart,” she said. “And you’re about to lose your job. I believe I already mentioned that.”
“Good night,” I said again.
Before I could hang up, she said, “I have something you want. You’re certainly not going to find it by speaking to amateur collectors.”
“I’m about to hang up,” I said. “You’d better get to the point.”
“I have the journals,” she said. “The reason that Theo’s trial was thrown. You do remember them, don’t you? The prosecution broke into Theo’s house to find them. They can tell you everything you want to know.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, but I could feel my heart rate accelerating.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Half-rate journalists are a dime a dozen in this city.”
She hung up.
The next morning, I woke up with a sour taste in my mouth. Weak daylight filtered in through the window, and I mentally replayed the conversation with the anonymous woman. I found my phone and checked to see if there were any messages from Leland, but there was nothing.
I dragged myself out of bed and padded into the kitchen, blinking sleep away. I pulled out the Atomic and scooped coffee into it, then put it on the stovetop and rubbed my eyes. When the coffee was ready, I diluted it with cold milk, then drank it in one quick jolt. The vines creeping in through the ceiling looked healthier than they had the last time I had checked, and I briefly contemplated the merits of growing a garden in my attic.
When I was feeling more awake, I turned around to grab something from the fridge, and then I saw it sitting on the counter.
My kitchen was always tidy, roof deterioration aside. If anything had been sitting on my counter the previous evening, I certainly would have noticed it, especially if that something was an expensive bottle of whiskey.
I crossed the kitchen and picked up the bottle, turning it to examine the label. Macallan whiskey, aged twenty-five years, unopened. Underneath the bottle was an envelope of thick, expensive parchment, embossed with a return address in Pasadena. I slipped it open and found a single sheet of paper inside.
I know about the film you stole from that magician, Max. He’s planning to press charges, but I’ve convinced him to let me speak to you first. I have something else that you want instead.
We want the same thing. Meet me at my house on Tuesday, at 11 a.m.
Heather
I flipped the envelope and studied the return address, then turned on my computer and searched for it. The satellite image showed a sprawling Spanish mansion on about three acres, protected by a high, smooth wall.
After a moment of consideration, I went back to Google and searched for “Spanish colonial estates in Pasadena.” I scrolled through the results until I spotted the house from the satellite image, then clicked on the article.
Annesley presides over Sausalito Avenue in Pasadena, read the caption. “Built as a summer house for the DeMille family in 1914, the stately home has retained its original charm even as the town evolved around it.”
I assumed the bottle and note had come from the woman on the phone. Could she be a descendant of Cecil B. DeMille?
I was stumped for a minute, and then I had a different idea. I searched for “Annesley” and “Pasadena,” and this time, I hit pay dirt.
Heather Engel-Feeny hosts a black-tie gala at her estate, Annesley; Hollywood elite attend, began one article. I clicked on the link, which took me to Vanity Fair. The party was an exclusive affair to raise money for the J. Paul Getty Trust, of which Heather was an executive chair.
I couldn’t help feeling impressed, but the pictures gave me no indication of who Heather was, or why she might want to talk to me about Theo. All of her guests were the power brokers of Hollywood and Los Angeles, the top-tier financial executives, art dealers, influential architects, and movie producers.
I finally found a picture of Heather herself and stopped to study her face. She was an attractive redhead who looked like she might be in her early sixties, but she had an unnaturally smooth complexion. In one photo she spoke to Tim Roth; in another, she smiled and spoke to a man with silver hair, whom the caption identified as developer Linus Warren. I spent an hour reading up on some of the other guests who were at the party.
When I finished clicking through the Vanity Fair gallery, I went back to the search bar to see what else I could find out about Heather.
The next article showed some more of Heather’s humanitarian work, but the third article indicated that she had recently fought against a Los Angeles County proposition that prevented one person from buying multiple historic homes in a certain period.
Historic homes. Bingo. I picked up the phone and called Madeleine.
“It’s early,” she said.
“I know you don’t sleep. Have you ever heard of Heather Engel-Feeny?”
“Yes!” she said. “She’s a legend. Why do you ask?”
“What do you think of her? Dark and ominous? Vaguely threatening?”
“No, not at all,” she said, perplexed. “She’s kind of a hero around the office. I’ve never met her, but she does some great stuff. Lots of preservation work.”
I thought for a minute. “You think she’s the type of person to pick a number from the phone book at random, and fuck with whoever picked up?”
“I’m at work. Is there something you need?”
“You said Heather’s a legend,” I said. “How’d you like to meet her?”
“Are you interviewing her for the Lens?” Madeleine sounded dubious. “That seems… beneath her.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. But no. One more question—does she have any connections to the film industry?”
“She’s the head of a huge charity,” Madeleine said. “She works with a lot of celebrities.”
“Anything else?”
“She might have gotten her start working in film,” she said. “No idea. Hey, I have to go. Call me when you meet up with her.”
“Will do.”
After hanging up with Madeleine, I went to the J. Paul Getty Trust website and found a page with Heather’s biography and background information. Descended from Hollywood royalty, Heather is intimately familiar with the history and rich cultural background of Los Angeles. Her family was one of the first families to arrive in Los Angeles, back in the days when Hollywood was nothing more than a cluster of farmhouses among the orange groves…
The pieces were starting to fall into place, and I had a feeling that I knew what I was going to find before I got there. It only took a few more minutes of searching through websites for me to find the name of her parents: “Heather Engel-Feeny was born to Norma Lisbon and Reuben Engel.”
I stopped reading, because I had made the last connection between Heather and Theodore Langley. Reuben Engel had been the producer in charge of Last Train to Avalon, and he had worked with Theo on a number of other movies, as well. His name hadn’t endured in the way of Lang or Hitchcock, but I had always been a fan. He and Theo had been a team for years, like Wilder and Diamond, making a slew of successful films.
Most people who remembered Engel’s name in the present day remembered him for something else, though: in the end, he had stood on the witness stand for the prosecution, declaring that Theo was absolutely, irrevocably guilty.
As I studied Heather’s image and wondered where I might have heard her voice before, it came back to me. Her voice had been the one I heard on the radio, weighing in about how Theodore Langley had killed those girls.