Murder among the Stars Read online

  Boots gave her a hug. “Just enjoy the party, lady. We Baby Stars have to stick together. This one, though.” She patted Lulu on the back. “She might have a chance. She’s got the goods, dimples and all.”

  “I think Juliette is the one we have to watch out for,” Eleanor said. “She’s sneaky, mean, and ambitious. The trifecta of successful starlets.”

  “I agree,” Toshia said. “Girls like her might get theirs in the end, but in the beginning they usually do pretty well.”

  Boots and Eleanor exchanged a quick look. “Well, maybe we can fix the odds a little bit,” Boots said.

  While the maids unpacked their suitcases, the girls were summoned to the main house for a cocktail party. Drinks—all two of them—would be served in the Assembly Room. But as Lulu was about to leave, Charlie made his needs known with a yip, so she slipped away with him for a quick stroll around the grounds before getting dressed.

  She found something fantastic around every turn. In one fountain, dolphins sported around naiads. In another, a cunningly placed conch hid essential parts of a naked and brawny Poseidon.

  “Guess I don’t have to bother going to Europe now,” she told Charlie as she gazed at a row of armless marble statues imported from Greece and Italy.

  She whipped around, startled, when she heard a giggle from the foliage, and a dark-haired, impish head poked out.

  “Don’t go even if you get the chance,” the girl said. “It’s deadly dull, and no one speaks properly, even the English.”

  “Hello,” Lulu said. “Are you family?”

  Charlie pushed his way into the shrubbery and looked pleased when he emerged again not only with an entire girl, but with a graying, portly dachshund on a leash. When Lulu could only see her peeping face she’d thought the girl must be a teenager. She had bright precocious eyes under arching brows, and a hint of lip rouge.

  But when she emerged completely from the bushes she looked like a totally different girl. Her hair was gathered in long twin braids that fell over her shoulders, tied with pink bows. She wore a high-waisted short frock with frills and petticoats, ruffled white socks, and black patent-leather shoes. Her body was slim and straight, her chest perfectly flat. At first Lulu thought she must be a very small woman dressed for a costume party. But no, she was a little girl after all, and apparently much younger than she first appeared.

  “I’m Patricia, Marion’s niece.”

  “I’m Lulu.” She held out her hand.

  “I know that,” Patricia said, giving it a businesslike shake. At their feet, the two dogs struck up their acquaintance with posterior sniffs. “Golly, everyone knows who you are now. Did you really, truly shoot someone? Gosh, how exciting!” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “I never get to do anything. Dinner in the nursery, bed by eight. It’s a sad and sorry life for a girl like I.”

  “Well, at your age . . . ,” Lulu began, then stopped herself. How old was Patricia? She talked like a young woman and dressed like a child. Lulu was perplexed. Perhaps children raised by millionaires matured differently than poor children. She’d have to ask Freddie later.

  “Tell me what it felt like,” Patricia begged. “Did the blood get on you?”

  What a morbid little person she was. But her eyes seemed eager as Charlie’s when he smelled a treat. Lulu could tell she was simply longing for experience—any experience. Lulu remembered that feeling. It had been replaced only a few weeks ago with a fervent hope that nothing dangerous or exciting would ever happen to her again.

  Against her better judgment, Lulu told her about the terrible ordeal that had been cleared up only a few weeks before. She left out many of the more sordid details that the studio lawyers had managed to conceal from the press. “The scene called for me to shoot the gun, so I did. I had no idea it was loaded.”

  “And they never figured out how the bullets got in there? Strange. I pored over the stories in WR’s newspapers. It always seemed to me as if the relevant particulars were somehow . . . missing.” She gave Lulu a canny look that made the actress feel decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Accidents happen,” Lulu said, neglecting to mention that the victim, rival actress Ruby Godfrey, had loaded the gun herself in a desperate play for publicity.

  “I bet Ruby had something to do with it herself,” Patricia said. Lulu kept her face resolutely expressionless. A few of the papers had speculated on that, but no one seemed to take it seriously. This girl was too perceptive for her own good.

  “She has an interesting face, that Ruby,” Patricia continued. “Always looks like she’s up to something. Which is good for an actress, maybe, but not so good when you actually are up to something. You, on the other hand, look as innocent as a May flower.” Patricia scrutinized Lulu’s face, and Lulu got the distinct impression she was trying to imitate her expression. “You could get away with anything. That must come in handy.”

  “How old are you?” Lulu finally couldn’t help but ask.

  She thought it would be an innocent question. After all, children got asked that all the time by tedious adults who couldn’t think of anything more interesting to ask. So she was surprised to hear Patricia give a sharp intake of breath, almost a sob, while a look of something strangely like fury flashed across her face.

  Then, just as suddenly, it was gone, replaced by a bizarre look of affected innocence. “I’m ten,” Patricia said, and now her voice was pitched up an octave, squeaky and girlish.

  Two

  Lulu wiggled and struggled into a formfitting strapless Elsa Schiaparelli cocktail dress of burnt orange silk velvet with a fiery pink satin-lined train, and entered the Assembly Room. She accepted a poison-green cocktail, though she didn’t really have a taste for alcohol beyond an occasional glass of champagne. Still, it was a decorative thing to have in her hand, and less noxious than the long cigarette holders some actresses thought were fashionable.

  Though the twenty actresses were the guests of honor, the party didn’t lack for male company. Anita Loos’s handsome husband and cowriter, John Emerson, was there, resplendent in a gray suit and shimmering lion-head tie tack. For some reason, the Lux Studios doctor Harry Martin was there too, neat scotch in hand as always. Lulu wondered how he’d finagled an invitation. There were newspaper men and Wall Street men, novelists and actors, and a few more exotic specimens, too—at least one unattached man for every woman. Freddie and his boss were nowhere to be seen. There was a palpable tension in the room as everyone waited for Hearst and Marion to arrive.

  “They have spy holes everywhere,” Veronica whispered into Lulu’s ear. “I even heard they have the rooms rigged with microphones. I bet Hearst is watching us right now. Now, make with the shenanigans! There have already been three whoopee cushion incidents, a cloud of itching powder, and one gal who keeps trying to shake people’s hands with an electric joy buzzer.”

  Lulu noticed Patricia sitting quietly by herself, her legs in lisle stockings kicking against the sofa as she watched the elegant crowd around her. “How old is Marion’s niece?” she asked.

  Veronica, who made it her business to know absolutely everything, thought a moment and said, “Ten.”

  “Are you sure?” Lulu asked.

  “Yes. They had a photo spread on her last birthday party. It had ten peacocks, ten flamingos, ten baby tigers, ten unicorns, for all I know. Yes, definitely ten.”

  “She seems so much older,” Lulu said.

  “You’ve only been in this life for a year, and I bet you feel a million years older at seventeen than you did at sixteen. Without the crow’s toes to show for it. Patricia has probably seen and done more in her ten years than most people do in a lifetime.”

  The girl seemed so bored and alone that Lulu sought her out and—with great effort and an alarming creak in the Schiaparelli’s stitches—sat down beside her.

  “Oh, thank goodness it’s you,” Patricia said, her voice jaded now, almost adult. “Can you believe someone actually patted me on the head? What do I look like, a dog? Why do peo
ple think children can be treated like dumb animals?”

  “People don’t think, most of the time,” Lulu said, feeling sorry for this precocious girl.

  “See, you can speak to me like an adult. Other people do baby talk and call me a good girl and ask what I want to be when I grow up. Is that what passes for conversation? Should I ask them where they plan to retire when they get wrinkly and washed up? Honestly, I detest these parties.” She flopped back on the sofa.

  “Isn’t there something you’d rather be doing? Surely in a place like this there are more suitable things for a . . . younger person such as yourself.”

  “I want to dance!” Patricia said. “I want to drink absinthe and flirt and creep off into dark nooks with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and . . .”

  Lulu couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “There’s plenty of time for that when you’re older.”

  Patricia gave her a withering look. “When I’m older. Do you know that phrase has been the bane of my existence for half my life? That’s what Marion is always saying. Just a few more years, and . . .” She clamped her mouth shut.

  “Tell you what,” Lulu said. “I might not be Doug Jr., but I can cut a mean rug.” She inhaled deeply and stood without ripping a stitch, which was something of a miracle, then exhaled as much as possible and held out her arm. “May I have this dance?”

  Patricia looked delighted. She turned on the Victrola and dropped the needle on Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave.”

  At once Lulu was caught up in the joy of dancing. She forgot all about the competition for the lead, the uncomfortable dress. Juliette’s nasty rumor even ceased to sting. Lulu had passed many of her happiest moments dancing with her mother in their cramped and squalid tenement. Even when they didn’t have food, they still had music they sang and hummed, and the lively swinging steps of her mother’s favorite dances.

  Now, taking the lead and swirling Patricia into the middle of the floor, Lulu felt totally unconcerned about the tittering crowd. She was happy and carefree. Patricia seemed joyous, too, because she flung her head back, laughing and wild as a maenad, and danced with such abandon that for a moment the rest of the guests fell silent and simply watched.

  It was at this moment that Hearst and Marion slipped into the room through a secret panel beside the fireplace.

  “Now, that’s what I like to see!” Hearst boomed. “Dance, everyone—dance!” He clapped his hands loudly, slightly out of time with the rhythm.

  No one disobeyed an order from Hearst. Almost instantly couples formed and found an open spot to finish out the tune.

  Marion bounced beside him in a flirty polka-dotted dress. “Come on, Daddy,” she cooed, dancing a quick step around him, looking like a tiny kitten frisking around a bloodhound. “I get you first.”

  Hearst made a rather ludicrous figure, bearish and lumbering beside the effervescent Marion. But he put on a game show, laughing at his own clumsiness. Lulu thought it must be easier to accept being a figure of fun when his signature on a check could buy anyone or anything. That would numb the sting.

  No, she realized a moment later. He was ordering them to laugh at him, just as he had ordered them to dance. If they’d done it on their own, they might be banished, ruined. But he enjoyed having the power to tell people to laugh at him. Look, he seemed to say with his antics, I can be ridiculous and still be above you.

  The music stopped, and Marion clapped, then flitted from guest to guest, saying charming nonsense to each until she was interrupted by Mrs. Mortimer, who whispered something in her ear that made her frown. They had a quick, hushed consultation before the housekeeper left and Marion resumed her flitting, though it seemed a little more forced now.

  To Lulu’s surprise, Hearst introduced himself to her after a while.

  He was daunting close up. Even the president wasn’t such a public legend as William Randolph Hearst. A president would be gone in four years, or eight. Hearst had been head of an empire for decades and seemed to have every intention of living to rule for many more. Though nearly seventy, he was hale. If he stooped a bit, he still towered over everyone in the room. If his fair hair was graying, it nonetheless flowed in a thick wave across his forehead.

  His eyes were the strangest of all, an unnerving pale blue that seemed somehow less alive than the rest of him. Lulu couldn’t tell if they were the eyes of a child that still turned to some secret inner world of his own, or the eyes of a monster.

  If he was a monster, he was a perfectly cordial one. “Welcome to the Ranch,” he said. “Are you the gal who was caught up in all that ruckus a while back? Marion was sure it was that one over there.” He pointed to the tall and sultry Dolores. “She looks more like the shooting type. But I remember your face from the Los Angeles Examiner. I never forget anything that appears in any of my papers. I peeked out and said yup, that’s the face.”

  “So you really do have spy holes?” Lulu couldn’t help saying.

  “Wouldn’t you?” he asked, and tapped the side of his nose.

  “I don’t think I’d like to know what people are saying about me behind my back,” Lulu admitted.

  “Oh, the microphones are just a rumor I started to keep everyone on their best behavior. And the spy holes are mostly so Marion can make sure no one is wearing her dress when she makes her entrance. Now, tell me, young lady, do you like art?”

  She caught Veronica’s eye across the room. The publicist made a pushing gesture that Lulu interpreted to mean she better take advantage of her moment with Hearst to be funny.

  “Art? Never met him,” Lulu quipped, embarrassed at the inanity of the joke.

  But Hearst gave a belly laugh. “Thank goodness, someone who didn’t bone up! Do you know, every guest who comes here knows I have an art collection and decides to impress me, so they look up some tidbit about Caravaggio’s knife fight or Titian’s tint, and try to talk like a professor.”

  Hearst gave Patricia a fond kiss on the head and went to chat with other guests. Patricia left the Assembly Room in search of cookies, making Lulu sure she really was ten after all.

  With Hearst and Marion now in attendance, the Pranks Olympics began. Certain that this was the way to make an impression, everyone pretended to be chatty and social, but they all had plans to make Marion laugh. Instantly, as if she were in on the gag, Marion plopped down on one of the several whoopee cushions hidden around the room. She squealed and jumped up. “Excuse me!” she said, looking far too ladylike to ever produce such a sound herself. Then she gave a mighty belch, and laughed.

  Jean Harlow, her hair almost exactly the same platinum shade as Lulu’s, offered Marion a tray of candied apples. Marion gamely bit into one and scrunched up her face into a grimace as sweat broke out on her forehead. “Spanish onion!” she gasped, fanning her mouth and raising her arm blindly for a drink.

  “You’ve probably had enough,” Hearst said gently as Marion downed a gin, honey, and lemon concoction called a Bee’s Knees.

  “Water ain’t gonna cut it, Pops,” she said, and called for another. “Whew-ee, Jean, you are one hot lady! And the pale horse takes the lead.”

  Joan Crawford supplied Marion’s next drink—in a dribble cup. “And Joanie edges up,” Marion said, wiping her chin.

  “I’ll give a hundred dollars to anyone if I crack three eggs over their head!” Juliette suddenly announced.

  “I’d volunteer,” Hearst said, “but it would just put me in the next tax bracket.”

  Juliette batted her dark lashes around the room, finally settling on the Lux Studio doctor, Harry Martin. “How about you, big boy?”

  “A hundred dollars? Really?” he asked. His voice was slurred with drink, but his eyes perked up at that remarkable sum.

  “If I crack three eggs over your head,” Juliette confirmed.

  “I’m game,” he said. “If you’re really good for it.”

  “And if not, make her pay you off some other way,” said John Emerson with a lascivious leer that brought a disapprovin
g look from Hearst. “I’m sure she can think of something.”

  “I always keep my word,” Juliette said staunchly. “To the exact letter.” But Lulu could tell she had a plan. Juliette looked sidelong at John, a look that seemed to promise something in the future, but then turned her attention squarely to the man known on the Lux sets as Docky. Marion, eager to see what would happen, told a servant to fetch three eggs.

  “Drumroll, please,” Juliette said as she held up the first egg. Everyone began tapping their fingers on the furniture. Juliette basked for a moment in the spotlight. Lulu saw Louella Parsons—gossip columnist extraordinaire, known to her friends as Lolly and her enemies as something unprintable—sidle up to Docky and whisper something in his ear. He shook his head brusquely and turned away from her. He seemed to like being the center of attention too, particularly when his audience consisted of so many pretty girls.

  With great fanfare she held up an egg . . . and smashed it down on top of Docky’s head. He flinched, but kept on a game face even when the gooey yolk dripped into his eyes.

  “Should I do another?” Juliette asked, holding up the next egg. When she was answered with cheers, she smashed that egg, too, onto Docky’s balding pate.

  Lulu didn’t want to look. It was humiliating.

  “That’s what this whole business is about,” Boots said from beside her. “Doing anything for money.”

  Juliette held up the last egg over Docky’s slimy head. His face was red, but he looked eager, too. For the hundred dollars? Lulu wondered. Didn’t a doctor make enough that he didn’t have to embarrass himself for money?

  “No,” Juliette said after a long pause. “I think I’m in the mood for a flip.” She summoned a maid and instructed her how to froth the last raw egg with brandy and spices for the unusual cocktail. Then she sat down next to Marion.

  “What about my money?” Docky demanded, hot and hoarse.

  Juliette looked at him with big, innocent eyes and said guilelessly, “But I didn’t break three eggs.” She shrugged her shoulders as if she were just too helpless to do anything about it.