TWENTY-THREE

After leaving the hospital, I didn’t even bother going home. It was a little past three in the afternoon, and I took out my phone to text Petra.

Want to know how the story ends?

A few minutes later, a response came through.

Yes.

On the way to her apartment, I stopped at a doughnut shop to pick up a bag of glazed doughnuts and two cups of coffee. Petra was already waiting outside her apartment when I pulled up to the curb. She climbed inside and took one of the cups of coffee.

“Where are we going?”

“Burbank.”

I followed the directions on my phone, which took me past Griffith Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Burbank had always felt strange to me, the way the sky seemed to zing with electricity, the pregnant stillness of a valley beneath a crest of mountains. The only errands I had ever done in Burbank involved IKEA and a bad acupuncture session.

After double-checking the address on my phone, I parked outside a little row of bungalows that had been converted into offices. They were all cute and perky, with flowers in boxes outside every window.

“Where are we?”

I still felt some of the lingering insomnia, but I was more clearheaded now. My heart was beating quickly, though, and I hoped that Petra could take the information well.

“Dr. Lewis is Theo’s son,” I said.

“We always thought that was a possibility, but do you have proof?”

“Here’s the really tricky bit,” I said, nodding. “I don’t think Eleanor died.”

“What?”

“I don’t think she died that night.” I took a deep breath. “I think it was part of an elaborate cover-up.”

“When did you decide this?”

“It makes sense,” I said. “Theo was a magician. People never knew how he pulled off those elaborate sets.”

“A set is different from a human body, Hailey. Think about the medical examiner, all the police. Do you think Eleanor played dead long enough to fool them into thinking she was dead? Or are you suggesting that Theo paid them off?”

“This is the really crazy bit,” I said. “I think… I think it was someone else’s body.”

She stared at me.

“The blood in Theo’s maid’s room didn’t match Eleanor’s DNA. What if they killed someone else, then dressed her up like Eleanor and told the police that there had been an accident?”

“Jesus.”

“Let’s go talk to Ben.”

We got out of the car and walked down the path between the bungalows. There was a directory board in a little courtyard, and I consulted it.

“He’s in three,” I said. “Let’s see if he’s in.”

We entered the bungalow, where we found an empty waiting room and a receptionist.

“Hello,” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, I thought I’d just drop by,” I said. “Is today busy?”

“Is this a medical emergency?”

“No, I’d just like to ask Dr. Lewis a few questions.”

“You have insurance?”

“Not since I quit my job.”

She looked at an iPad. “He’s on a house call,” she said. “But I imagine he’s on his way back to the office now. Take a seat, I can squeeze you in for a quick appointment when he gets here.”

I took a seat, glancing around the office. “Nice place,” I said. “It looks like a house.”

“It was,” she agreed. “These were bungalows for the Disney studio, back in the fifties and sixties.”

“So I’m sitting in someone’s living room?”

“Yes,” she said. “The bookshelf is actually a fireplace.”

Petra and I were quiet as we waited. Three patients cycled through, exchanged words with the receptionist, glanced at us, and left. After an hour, the front door opened and Ben came in.

He didn’t see me at first, but went straight to his receptionist’s desk, then checked the mail.

“You have a walk-in,” she said, and gestured at me.

Dr. Lewis glanced up with a polite smile, then realized who I was.

“Hailey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I was hoping that we could talk.”

Petra stood up and glanced at me.

Ben addressed her. “Did you come together?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see you, Hailey, but your friend will have to wait here.”

“No insurance,” the receptionist said in a low voice, but Dr. Lewis waved a hand.

“Don’t worry about that, Sandy,” he said, then motioned for me to follow me into his office.

I was so high on adrenaline and nerves that I had lost the ability to make small talk.

“Thanks for not pressing charges,” I said.

He frowned.

“You know, the other night,” I said. “When I broke into Windhall.”

“Leland wanted to, but I managed to talk him out of it.”

“Any idea who set that fire?”

“It was electrical.” His mouth twitched.

“I know who you are,” I said.

He put his bag on his chair, then turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “How about that.”

“You’re Theo’s son.”

He occupied himself with some papers by his computer, and for a moment, I thought that he hadn’t heard me.

“You’re Connie,” I added.

He set down his papers and then slowly turned to face me. “Hailey, I’m not willing to talk about this with you,” he said. “If you’re feeling unwell, I’m happy to give you a diagnosis, but otherwise, I have real patients to see.”

“Eleanor didn’t die that night, did she?”

He was quiet now, watching me.

“Theo loved Eleanor,” I went on. “He would have done anything for her. They wanted to leave Los Angeles, but she couldn’t, because she had two more movies on her contract. She was threatening to expose Reuben for the things he had done to her friends, and they even wrote a movie about it. When they found out that Reuben Engel was planning to kill her, they decided to run away.”

He still didn’t say anything. I was on a roll, and my heart was beating so quickly that I thought I might start hyperventilating.

“That’s why you asked me to look into Lola DeWitt,” I said. “She was the girl in the garden, wasn’t she?”

“Who’s your friend?” He nodded toward the reception area.

“Her name is Petra,” I said. “She was helping me research the article.”

“What have you told Heather?”

“Nothing at all.”

“I know about your contract with Heather, Hailey. I have trouble believing you haven’t told her anything.”

“I was planning to report to her,” I said. “But when the story started to unfold, I realized that I didn’t trust her.”

“I don’t know which of the journals she gave you,” he said. “Not exactly. But I do know Heather, and I know that she’s incredibly manipulative. If she gave you something, it would have been a distraction from what really happened. Theo’s real journals detailed what really happened, and that’s why the prosecution went after them.”

“Tell me what really happened.”

“I thought you knew everything.” He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you come here to tell me that?”

“I came here to tell you that I have information,” I said. “Information that’s come at a great cost to me. I can run half a story with that, and you can sue me for misinformation. We’ll go back and forth for a few years, and eventually the real story will leak out. In the meantime, however, Heather will go forward with her development in Highland Park, and by the time everyone realizes that her father was a murderer, it will be too late.”

Ben’s face was impossible to read. He hesitated for a moment, then crossed the room and went out into the reception area.

“Lucy, please cancel my next few appointments,” he said. “I have to step out for a minute.”

He came back into the office, then closed the door. “We can talk,” he said. “But not here.”

I was suddenly wary. “I think I’m more comfortable talking here,” I said.

Dr. Lewis folded his arms across his chest, annoyed. “You came here to talk to me,” he said. “If you want to talk, we can talk, but I’m not willing to have such a personal discussion in my place of business. Yes? No?”

“Fine.”

“We’ll take my car,” he said. “I could use a coffee.”

We exited into the reception area. Petra looked up from the book that she was reading.

“Can she come with us?” I asked.

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s okay, Hailey,” Petra said. “Go without me.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I said. “It’s probably best if you go home. I don’t want to keep you here.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Thanks, Petra.”

Ben was quiet as we drove out of Burbank, toward the city. I didn’t want to ask where we were going, because I didn’t want him to know how anxious I was. Finally, he turned off the freeway and down Los Feliz Boulevard, and I realized where he was taking me.

“Griffith Park?” I asked.

“You know a better spot for a private conversation?”

“What about all the tourists?”

“They won’t pay attention to us,” he said. “They came for the view of the Hollywood sign, the city. We could set something on fire and they wouldn’t pay attention.”

It was similar to something that Theo had said, about distracting someone while presenting them with the truth all along. The most gifted storytellers were the ones who didn’t have to work to hide their secrets, they simply presented you with another option.

We stopped at the Trails Café for coffee, then got back in the car and headed up to the Observatory. It was a quiet Sunday, and Ben found parking near the beginning of the hiking trail.

“Here we are,” he said, climbing out. “Let’s take a walk.”

We walked side by side in silence, until we reached a bench overlooking the city. The trail was quiet at that time of day; it was cold enough that most of the tourists had flocked to the safety of the observatory.

“I guess there’s no harm in me talking to you,” he said. “Not now.”

It took me a moment to realize his meaning. “The fire,” I said. “I heard that Theo was inside. Is it true?”

“He was dead before they reached the hospital.”

“I’m so sorry.” I wondered if Ben had gone through Theo’s emails after his death, and seen the message that I had sent him after the fire. I decided not to ask him.

“Tell me what you know,” Ben said, facing Los Angeles.

“Reuben Engel was a monster, and Eleanor threatened to expose him,” I said. “They wrote a movie and started production, but Reuben found out the movie was really about him. Theo and Eleanor didn’t have a lot of options, so they faked a death.”

“Not quite.”

“It wasn’t her body, I know that much,” I said. “I found the blood, had it tested.”

He shook his head, incredulous. “You’ve done your job, I’ll give you that much.”

“It was Lola’s body, wasn’t it?”

“They didn’t plan to kill her,” he said softly. “It was never part of the plan.”

“Right, so this perfect Eleanor doppelgänger turns up dead, and the real Eleanor doesn’t appear to set the story straight.”

“Have you seen pictures of Lola?” he asked, turning to give me a cross look.

“Just the shots of Eleanor’s dead body. Lola’s dead body, I guess.”

“She looked exactly like Eleanor. If you’ve seen The Man Who Death Forgot, you’ve seen her. She was in most of the second half of the movie, because Eleanor refused to come to work. She didn’t want to work with Engel.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Lola was unstable, though. Nobody would deny that. Eleanor tried to take the girl under her wing, but she was like a parasite. Eleanor found her in her dressing room, going through her things. She would show up at parties, pretending to be Eleanor. It was funny for a while, but Eleanor was already feeling paranoid and trapped.”

“So they killed her?”

He cut me another look. “Let me finish telling the story,” he said. “No more interruptions.”

“Sorry.”

“They had been planning to escape for a while,” he said. “Eleanor’s aunt Penelope had a horse farm in San Diego, and they were going to stay there for a while, then head down to Mexico. Theo wanted to finish making Last Train to Avalon, because it was about what really happened—the fact that Reuben Engel was trying to have her killed, that the film industry was corrupt, et cetera.

“They threw a party. It was supposed to be one last chance to say goodbye to friends, without really saying goodbye, of course. But then Lola showed up.”

He rubbed his neck and took a sip of coffee. “The producers had been making her promises for a while,” he said. “They said that she could be the next Eleanor. They wanted another pretty, bright-eyed starlet, and one they could control. They’d spent all this time and money on Eleanor, but she refused to let them control her life. Lola wanted to be Hollywood’s sweetheart, but she couldn’t take Eleanor’s place unless Eleanor was actually out of the picture.”

“Where does Reuben fit into the story?”

“He took Lola to Windhall that night,” he said. “I don’t think anyone was supposed to get killed. There are conflicting stories about this, but I think Lola was planning to disfigure Eleanor. Cripple her, maybe. They found out that Reuben had the whole thing planned. There was a fight, and Theo stepped in to help Eleanor.”

I pictured Lola’s famous injuries, the hole through the heart, the black eye.

“Did Theo punch Lola?”

“Theo would never,” he said. “But there was a struggle. She fell off the balcony on the third story and landed on the second-story roof.”

I frowned. “There was no third story balcony on Windhall.”

“There was,” he said. “It was part of the renovations when Theo moved into Windhall. They had it removed after Lola died.”

“The spike,” I said. “I thought they stabbed her through the back.”

He shook his head. “She fell from the balcony and landed on the roof,” he repeated. “There was a row of gothic Victorian spikes. She landed on one, and while the party continued, Theo moved her inside.”

“Into the maid’s room,” I said. “That’s why there was blood on the windowsill.”

“You should have been a cop. You figured it all out.”

“They must have taken the spikes down,” I said, thinking. “That’s why there was a delay.”

“Eleanor panicked.”

“What about the dress, though? Lola was wearing Eleanor’s famous green dress.”

“The dress never belonged to Eleanor,” he explained patiently. “It was an iconic image that the press seized on.”

“Why didn’t they tell the police what really happened? If Lola was really the aggressor, Eleanor had an excuse.”

He looked sad. “It wasn’t that simple,” he said. “For one, Los Angeles was completely owned by the studios. Eleanor had been receiving threats, notes from stalkers, for years. Without the studio’s protection, she wouldn’t have been safe.”

“Awfully cavalier, to just let someone die.”

“Lola was dead,” he said softly. “There was nothing they could do for her. And she was the one who attacked Eleanor.”

“What about the medical examiner? Didn’t he realize that it wasn’t Eleanor?”

“The man was a drunk,” he said. “Besides, Eleanor’s aunt Pen was in on the plan. She drove up from San Diego straightaway, identified the body. She was hysterical, they couldn’t contain her. She was calling out for Theo’s head. All an act, you see.”

“And Theo was willing to risk going to jail over a crime he didn’t commit?”

“It happened so quickly, I don’t think they even considered the consequences.”

“So that’s why Theo came back,” I said. “It was because of the new death. He was worried that people would break into Windhall and find out what really happened.”

Ben nodded.

“But why did he leave the house alone for so long? Wasn’t he worried that someone would break in earlier?” I asked. “I mean, why didn’t he destroy the house as soon as he left Los Angeles?”

“There were attempts,” he admitted. “At first, Theo considered having the house torn down, but Leland said that the construction crews might find the hidden room. Instead, Leland filed a petition to have it declared a historic monument. It’s one of the oldest remaining buildings in Los Angeles, as I’m sure you’re aware. Or was, I should say, since it’s gone now.”

I cleared my throat. “There’s something else,” I said. “Something I never figured out. There was a film.”

Ben frowned. “What film?”

“It was just a clip, really,” I said. “Shot in Eleanor’s dressing room. Less than thirty seconds long. A man walks toward her and starts to attack her. I couldn’t figure out who made it.”

Ben closed his eyes. “Ahh, yes. I know what you’re talking about.”

“Was it Engel? The assailant, I mean.”

He nodded. “It was good timing. Engel showed up to set drunk half the time anyway, and from what I’ve heard, he was wasted that day. Jules was behind the camera, and he turned it on Engel.”

I was taken aback. “If they had proof that Engel attacked Eleanor, wouldn’t that force the studio’s hand? They’d have to deal with the problem.”

Ben held up a finger. “They couldn’t prove it was Engel,” he said. “His back was to the camera. That film was one of a chain of events that led to the creation of Last Train to Avalon.”

I had been studying Eleanor for years, chasing down someone I thought had been her assailant and murderer, but all along, her studio had been the one to betray her. I couldn’t believe that they would treat her as a prized commodity and yet do nothing to ensure her safety.

“How did you feel when they told you about all this? Were you still a kid?” I asked.

“We lived on a farm back east. Of course, those were the days before Internet, so I was a young man before I even knew that they had been famous. Our telephone barely worked most of the time.” Ben paused. “How did you find out that I was Connie?”

“I went to Vermont.”

He looked confused for a moment, then seemed to realize what I was talking about.

“They were so careful,” he said quietly. “They thought of everything. How on earth did you find out?”

“I didn’t, actually,” I admitted. “Petra is the one who figured it out. There was a lab developing number on the back of a photograph. Grafton, Vermont. I went there and met someone there who remembered Flannery, and you, of course. He called you Connie.”

“You know, a part of me always thought this day would come,” he said quietly. “I thought that someone would find out the truth. I used to imagine what I would say to them, how I would explain it. It’s not my job to explain it, though. It’s Theo’s. But I guess it’s too late for that.”

“Didn’t you want people to know the truth?” I said. “If you knew that Theo was innocent, and you knew what really happened, wouldn’t you want others to know?”

He seemed to be at a loss for words. “Theo was always the storyteller, not me,” he said. “Nobody could take a narrative out of his hands. He was adamant that we keep living our lives the way we always had. I knew that revealing the truth would have been a violation of his trust. Privacy was so important.”

“That doesn’t seem to leave you with much agency.”

“They didn’t tell me until I was fifteen.” He took another sip of his coffee. “By the time I realized, I didn’t see what good it would do to change things around. I thought they were ordinary people.”

“And why did he agree to talk to me?”

Ben gave me a rueful smile. “He wanted to see how much you knew,” he said. “If you knew about me, about my family. That’s part of the reason he’s kept this charade up, you know, all these years. He didn’t want anyone else’s name to get dragged through the mud.”

“Dr. Lewis—”

“Really, Hailey, call me Ben. I think we’ve been through enough to have passed formality.”

“I looked up Lola,” I said. “It said that her date of death was 1951. If Lola’s body was the one they used, how is that possible?”

“When the studio realized what had happened, they fixed things. They didn’t want it to lead back to them. By then, Theo had been long gone. They couldn’t find him.”

“And Eleanor changed her name to Rebecca Lewis.”

“Yes.” Ben closed his eyes.

“She died recently, didn’t she? That’s why Theo was ready for the story to come out.”

“Last year. Throat cancer.”

I cleared my throat and rubbed my hands together, unsure of what to say. I had been around enough death to be squeamish with shallow condolences, but Eleanor’s death truly did feel like a loss, and Ben had been extraordinarily compassionate with me.

“It’s hard. It must have been hard, I mean,” I said.

“It’s fine.”

I finished my coffee, which had gone cold. Los Angeles glimmered in the distance, a flat bas-relief of the city I thought that I knew so well.

“There were so many people,” I said. “They looked everywhere, that night, if you can believe the articles. How on earth did they hide Eleanor?”

Ben gave me a rueful smile. “You’ve been to the house,” he said. “You must have seen it.”

“Seen what?”

He drew a shape in the air. “There was a little door in the wall, leading to the neighbor’s house. He was away, filming something in Italy. They stole through the garden and disappeared, and then Theo came back.”

“Wow. Of course.”

We were both silent for a moment. It almost felt companionable.

“I used to imagine meeting him,” I said. “I spent my whole childhood wishing that I could have grown up in that world of movie stars and glamour. I didn’t know whether I should fear him or want to be his friend. But I definitely wanted to be a part of that gilded life.”

Ben nodded.

“One last question,” I said. “The second set of footprints in the garden. Who did they belong to?”

He sighed and shifted in his seat. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “She died twenty years ago. He never wanted the truth to get out about her.”

“It was Marja,” I said, slowly realizing the truth.

“Yes, Fritz’s mother,” he said. “She was the one who helped Theo move the body to the garden, and afterward, she was the one who boarded up the maid’s room and covered it with wallpaper. That’s why Fritz was always so unfriendly to you; he didn’t want you asking questions. I don’t think they would have gotten away with any of it without her.”

All of the details I had collected over the years went flipping through my head like playing cards loosed from a deck. There was one detail that stuck in my head.

“The shoes,” I said. “The second set of footprints. They belonged to a man.”

Ben gave me a sad smile. “What did they always say about Theo?” he asked.

“That he was a murderer…?” I was drawing a blank.

Ben gave me a look of infinite patience. “Every detail,” he said. “He thought of every detail, in all of his films, down to the rip in a pair of stockings. He knew that all the household staff would be questioned about that night, and he didn’t want to implicate Marja. He gave her a pair of men’s dress shoes.”

“And it never occurred to anyone that it wasn’t actually a man?”

“No, never,” he said. “Not until you came along. Theo was so close to getting away with it.”