Dream Town

Chapter 67

Archer left the idle hour and drove to the hospital to check on Morrison and Willie. The former was sitting like a statue in the same chair, her hand gripping one of Willie’s. The latter was still unconscious, but now looking far more alive than dead.

Archer called Callahan from the hospital and made arrangements to drive over and pick her up from the studio in Burbank, and take her to where she was staying.

She was waiting outside of Warners wearing a brown overcoat and clutching her purse with both hands.

Archer had been to so many studios lately he figured they should give him a SAG card.

He opened the passenger door of the rental and motioned her in.

“This isn’t the Delahaye,” she remarked.

“Hell, what is?”

Callahan told him she was staying at an apartment in Brentwood rented by a friend of hers who had just gone away to shoot a movie in Mexico for Paramount. It was in a pink stucco building and nicely laid out with Spanish tile floors the color of sunset; grainy, darkened wooden beams; plaster walls; and ceiling fans in every room, and a balcony with wrought iron railing overlooking a courtyard garden with a trickling fountain in the center.

They had picked up some dinner from a nearby deli and brought it to the apartment. Archer had driven a circuitous route and backtracked twice to make sure no one was following them.

Callahan changed into white linen slacks and a light green long-sleeved blouse and put her hair up with a clip. She poured out some white wine, and they sat on the balcony and ate and listened to the strengthening wind and the fountain.

“So, Willie is really doing okay?” she asked.

“I talked to the doctors. He’s out of danger. He’s going to make it.”

“Thank God.”

“Thank the doc and Willie being too stubborn to die. Got a question,” he said, taking a sip of the wine. “I found out from a banker guy that women can’t get a loan for a house without a man signing, too.”

Callahan set her wine down and glanced at him. “That’s right.”

“So how did you manage it?”

She took a bite of food. “Somebody at Universal helped me. The studios, well, they understand the problem. Single actresses make enough money to buy a home but can’t get a loan. So they have men who will guarantee the loan.”

“Guarantee the loan? What do they get in return? You mean you have to pay them?”

She glanced at him. “Yes. They get a monthly fee. It’s an added cost women have to pay.”

Archer looked down. “I’m sorry, Liberty.”

“For what?”

“That you have to go through crap like that. You make way more than me, but I don’t need you to cosign a house loan.”

“It’s just the way things are, Archer.”

“And that doesn’t make them right.”

“Forget it. I’m doing fine.”

“How’s the new film coming?” he asked after a few moments of silence.

“I play a frustrated housewife married to an American scientist secretly working for the Soviets. My part has some real meat to it. She turns out to be very heroic.”

“That’s great. What about that other film you were looking at doing, Dial M for Murder? You thought you had a shot at the lead?”

She took a drink of wine and shook her head. “I did a screen test, and I thought it went okay. But the thing is I’m not a big star, Archer, and Hitchcock only works with the best. I heard they want Grace Kelly for the lead. She’s all over town right now. Hell, she’ll probably get the lead in Rear Window, too. But there are other roles in both films I can try for.”

“Hey, it’s still Hitchcock, right?”

She mustered a smile. “Yes, it is. So, how is the case coming?”

“It’s coming maybe faster than before.”

“And Darren Paley?”

“We’re zeroing in on him, Liberty, have no fear.”

She said sharply, “But I do have fear, Archer, for you.”

He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “I know this one has been close.”

“ ‘Close’ doesn’t come close to describing it.”

“After what happened to Willie, I can’t walk away from it, Liberty. You know that.”

She finished her wine and poured them some more. “I know it so well I can’t sleep.”

He dipped his head. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your problem. It’s mine.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Since when is life that? Sometimes you make your own bed and sometimes you make somebody else’s and have to sleep in it.” She looked around and her expression lightened. “Sherry, the gal that rents this place, was really keen to meet you, Archer.”

“Why was that?” he said, looking surprised.

“I showed her your picture. I can’t imagine what she saw in it,” she added in an impish tone.

“Don’t mess with my ego, Liberty, it’s right where I like it.”

She smiled. “Sherry knows Ellie, too. She was working on a picture with her before Ellie disappeared. I told her what happened. She’s really upset about it, too.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.” She glanced at him with a mischievous look. “I also told Sherry about our date at Chasen’s. She joked that she was going to crash it so she could meet, as she said, the world’s most handsome gumshoe.”

This had a remarkable effect on Archer. He sat up straight and his expression was tight and focused. “You told your friend Sherry that I was a private detective and that we were having dinner at Chasen’s on New Year’s Eve?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Do you think she could have told Lamb that?”

“Ellie? I don’t see why. But so what if she did?”

“Lamb told us she was there that night for dinner, but her date didn’t show up.”

“Right, so?”

“I know guys stand gals up, but on New Year’s Eve? Where’s he going to get another date? And she didn’t seem all that upset, either. That always seemed off to me.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She lightly punched him in the arm. “I would have been steamed if you’d stiffed me, Archer.”

“But there would be no reason for her to be upset if there was never any guy.”

“But then why would Ellie have been there?”

“To meet me.”

Callahan laughed. “Okay, I know Sherry said you were handsome and all, but don’t let your ego—” She stopped and looked at him, understanding alighting on her features. “You don’t mean that. You mean it was because you’re a detective?”

Archer nodded. “She was probably waiting for you or me to mention my profession and if neither one of us did, she’d figure a way to work it in somehow. And then she lays her whole story out for me. Says she wants to hire me. And I go out there and trip over a dead body.”

“But she couldn’t possibly have known you’d go out there that night.”

“She didn’t have to. It was enough that she told me she feared for her life. That would explain why she disappeared. And I’d run around making inquiries after she didn’t show for our meeting, to give her vanishing legitimacy.” He looked at her. “I would be the reason people would think she was missing because someone had done something to her. Otherwise they’d think she’d just run off on her own. And people would look for a reason why she would do that. And that would not be good for her.”

“But she had no idea then that a dead body would show up in her house.”

“Bender had been dead since around two that afternoon.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying she came to Chasen’s to meet you knowing that there was a dead body in her house?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Do you think she killed him?”

“I don’t know. I do know if she did she couldn’t have moved him from where he was killed to where he was found, not by herself.”

“But why put somebody you killed in your own house? Why not dump him in the ocean?”

“It might not have gone down that way. I have another theory, but that’s all it is.”

“So was someone trying to kill Ellie or was that all just a lie, too?”

“I haven’t figured that part out.”

“What the hell is going on, Archer?”

“I don’t know all the pieces, just some. But the more pieces I find, the more the picture comes alive. And by the way, Lamb is married.”

Callahan’s jaw slumped. “What?”

He explained about Lamb and Peter Bonham. And also that Lamb had blackmailed Gloria Mars. And that the woman had also worked with Alice Jacoby in infiltrating the Jade for research on a script that they wanted Samantha Lourdes to star in and Ransome to direct.

“They knew about the dope and maybe the other stuff and they never told the cops. And I can bet you that Lamb would have blackmailed Lourdes into starring in it. She’d threaten to expose her dirty little secret at the Jade if she didn’t go along.”

Callahan looked gobsmacked. “You think you know somebody. What a thorough bitch.”

“Nobody in this town really knows anybody else. I know that and I don’t even live here. I just trespass from time to time.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said glumly. “Do you think they’ll ever get the movie made?”

He looked upset by the query. “Who cares? I only care about the real part of this whole thing, Liberty. I’m not into fantasies.”

“I can see that now, Archer. I really can.” She said this in a voice so despondent and her expression was so forlorn that he took her hand and held it. And they listened to the wind and the fountain until it grew quite dark and Archer had to take his leave.

It was time to go back to Malibu.