The Sharpest Needle Read online

  ‘Yes. For the time being.’

  Edith poured her own generous helping of gin. ‘We must defer to Detective Morrow, Lillian. He’s right. This is a delicate matter.’

  ‘As delicate as gelatin sequins,’ I said despondently.

  Gene rose. ‘I suggest you both return to the party while you can. I expect the fun to be shut down shortly.’

  Nero, or at least a moderately handsome fellow in a toga, fiddled on the patio. A touch on the nose, particularly given Simon’s earlier words invoking the burning of Rome. I appreciated that this Nero had taken the trouble to paint his violin gold, though. It added to the decadent mood.

  I went to Ocean House’s front door and deliberated leaving. I still hadn’t reached a decision when I spotted Vera, her face a frozen mask, projecting a chill that cut a path through the crowd. Walter Kehoe followed some distance behind.

  Vera stopped alongside me at the door. She looked out into the night.

  ‘Don’t go with him,’ I said.

  ‘He killed Timothy, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. And he has the painting. Otto’s painting. I don’t know where it is. You can’t get in the car with him.’

  Vera closed her lips around a cigarette. She sparked it with a gold lighter. In the flame’s glow, her eyes seemed black. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She stepped out into the darkness.

  Kehoe reached the door a few seconds later. He scowled at me. He’d taken off his jacket and draped it over his arm. It was all I looked at.

  To hell with leaving. I trudged back into the house, toward the light and energy.

  Marion sought me out. She’d tossed her Joan of Arc wig, her blonde hair pinned and gleaming. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Where’s Argus? When will I hear from him?’

  ‘It’s over. He won’t bother you again.’

  ‘It is? And the painting?’

  ‘There’s a Montsalvo right where you left it,’ I said, figuring that was true enough.

  ‘Then W.R. never has to find out.’ Marion squeaked and embraced me. ‘Thank you so much, Lillian. I wanted to spare him any aggravation. What can I say? I started out a gold-digger and ended up in love.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  When the band launched into its next number, Marion got on the floor with Hearst. The old boy didn’t require much coaxing; after all, he had everyone’s favorite on his arm. He proved surprisingly spry for his age, spinning Marion around. As he did, Charlie Chaplin, still in Mongol mufti, popped up out of the crowd to wave goodbye. Marion blew him a kiss with a wistful glance. She was gazing at a past road not taken, leading to a future that had never happened. If Chaplin saw the same thing, I couldn’t tell. He slipped away.

  Edith and Bill Ihnen, I noticed, had joined the throng on the dance floor, along with Kay and Ready, Kay peering with a sniper’s intensity at the faces around her. Gene walked over to Hansen, still adjusting his tunic as he glared at all and sundry, and made gestures implying they’d have to tell the orchestra to pack it up. Lynn, Gene’s harem girl date, seized his outstretched hand and tugged him forward. He did not resist as much as I expected him to.

  It was official. Damn near everyone was dancing except me, all determined to fit in one final shimmy before the curtain dropped.

  I strode over to Hansen, fear evident in his eyes as I approached.

  ‘Gene told you about gelatin sequins. How important they are,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  I pointed at Kaspar Biel, doing a two-step goosestep with Clara Barton. ‘He’s wearing some. You might want to haul him in.’

  I waited until Hansen had rousted Biel over Biel’s vociferous objections. Then I marched up to my next target.

  ‘I think you should dance with me,’ I told Orson Welles, interrupting his tête-à-tête with Abraham Lincoln.

  ‘I believe you’re right.’ The boy wonder took my hand and whisked me onto the floor, as Nero continued to saw his fiddle.

  San Bernardino Lamplighter September 4, 1939

  KATHERINE DAMBACH’S

  SLIVERS OF THE SILVER SCREEN

  Heaven and hell collided while the lanterns glowed at Marion Davies’s Pacific palace for her Saints and Sinners social on Friday eve, in more ways than one. It’s old news that a guest was slain at the shindig. But let’s concentrate on the shimmering sights of that soigné soirée, especially now that war talk covers the front page and Miss Marion is off to Chicago. Let’s remember a warm night filled with music and merriment, and famous faces hidden behind masks and false beards. When they spun on the dance floor, your correspondent spied forked tails and unearned angel’s wings.

  Was the party a swan song for producer Walter Kehoe? We hear he’s left Hollywood for greener pastures south of the border. After twenty years, the man behind Kehoe’s Kapers is heading to Mexico, searching for new wellsprings of inspiration … Speaking of Mexico, wasn’t that Juárez-born Gilbert Roland I saw at the Davies beach house dressed as Genghis Khan? I’d know that moustache anywhere.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The heat had broken, and clouds cast for their fluffiness dotted the sky. A picture-perfect afternoon for a drive.

  Our destination wasn’t far from Ocean House. Edith detoured so we could tool past it. In Marion’s absence, the manse didn’t feel shuttered so much as deserted, like a set on the Paramount lot after the cameras stopped rolling.

  Edith swung off the beach road and up into Santa Monica. Soon we saw the quaint English-style house we had both visited before, and had been summoned to today.

  Salka Viertel waited for us in her doorway. A fiftyish woman with a peasant’s face and an aristocrat’s bearing, she dressed simply, her lively eyes ornamentation enough. She embraced us both in turn, scolding Edith for not dropping by more often. Edith asked how she was doing.

  ‘Who can answer that question? I listen to the news with a dread fascination. How much worse can it get? Like today, with the Athenia, and the count going up.’ She tossed her hands in despair thinking of the SS Athenia, the British liner apparently torpedoed by the Germans in retaliation for England’s declaration of war. Untold numbers of passengers, many of them American and Canadian, lost in the North Atlantic.

  Hastily changing the subject, she asked, ‘And you, Lillian? How is your job with Mr Rice?’

  ‘It might be changing. He’s taken an interest in preserving the history of movies. It’s all he’s been talking about.’

  ‘A mountain of a task, I should think.’ Salka laughed. ‘So much has already been lost. The time to build an ark is before the first drops of rain. I have boxes of scripts that are his should he want them for posterity. I could use the extra space. Come, to the kitchen! We shall feast on yesterday’s leftovers.’

  We stepped into her cluttered and welcoming house. ‘Still having the salons every Sunday?’ Edith asked.

  ‘They’re more important than ever. I fear we will not have many more newcomers. What matters now is finding work for the ones already in America.’ Salka, a former actress who had made her reputation writing films for Greta Garbo, was now largely known for opening her home to artists, writers and musicians who had fled the rise of fascism in Europe. Her generosity of spirit, fabled far and wide, was the reason we were here.

  Before she would tell the story, she fed us, cutting slices of delicate, flaky apple strudel. ‘Believe me, there is more. So much food, even though many people came, as you might expect given the news. One of my guests was completely unknown to me. A lovely girl, striking. The kind of girl where you would say, “You should be in pictures”, only she looked so tired. She introduced herself, we sat and talked. She said she had something for me, for safekeeping. I thought she was making a joke. I told her she doesn’t know me. But she said she knew about me, and that was enough. She returned with the item – along with a note addressed to you, Lillian. She was aware, this girl, of our friendship.’

  Salka left the room and fetched the object in question, placing it on an empty seat at th
e table. Together, we stared at it, the patches of tan and brown, the shades of gray, the fearsome black lines. The austerity of Otto Haas’s painting was growing on me.

  ‘I like it very much,’ Salka declared, handing me a sealed envelope with my name on it. The words on the single sheet within slanted downward, as if they’d been written in haste.

  Lillian,

  Poor Walter didn’t make it home before being waylaid by some friends I had called before we left that hideous party. I told you I’d be fine. Revenge for Timothy will have to wait. I have more of Otto’s paintings to find. Look in on this one every once in a while, will you? In English, its name translates as Pindrop.

  V (?)

  I smiled at Vera’s signoff. Enigmatic to the last.

  Edith read the note as well. ‘Astonishing. Mr Kehoe never knew about this painting.’

  ‘Or that the Montsalvo he sought was a fake,’ I said. ‘Or that Vera was. Although he knows that now.’

  ‘You’d think someone who’s been in show business as long as he has would have known better.’

  Salka chuckled. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I can tell you when you are in show business long enough, all you believe are the stories you want to tell.’

  We considered Pindrop with fresh eyes. ‘At least we know why Kehoe scarpered off to Mexico,’ I said. ‘Tied into a murder, set upon by thieves. He must be terrified. I hope they drag him back to face the music.’

  ‘If they don’t,’ Edith said, ‘that leaves him stranded in Mexico. For him, a punishment worse than prison.’

  ‘What will you do with the painting?’ I asked Salka.

  ‘I’m not sure yet. This is outside my area of expertise. I hope your friend knows that. I’ve asked a few people for advice. A small museum, perhaps, can exhibit it. Work like this must be seen, shared. I’ll do what I can to honor Otto’s memory. In the meantime, my focus is on finding jobs for those still with us. Edith, you must have heard something.’

  ‘I’m not in the executive suites, you understand. But one picks up the occasional rumor.’ Edith began offering tidbits of gossip, which Salka tried to spin into gainful employment for the émigrés in her care.

  Having no leads to contribute, I sipped my coffee and gazed at Pindrop by Otto Haas. It was comfortable at Salka’s, as cozy as it would be on any Sunday thronged with exiles craving a taste of home. I felt more at ease here than I did at Ocean House, less than a mile distant but an entire world away. All the two structures had in common, really, was their proximity to the shore. Growing up, it had never occurred to me that I’d one day live on the other side of the country, so close to the Pacific. I thought about my late father, and wondered if Liam Frost had ever made it this far west, if he’d clapped eyes on the waters that had become part of my life.

  The notion that perhaps he had made me smile.