Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, No. 1. Whole No. 821, January 2010

The Death of Ramona by Stephanie Kay Bendel

Boulder, Colorado, freelance writer Stephanie Kay Bendel has taught fiction writing for more than two decades, specializing in the field of suspense. She is the author of Making Crime Pay: A Practical Guide to Mystery Writing. Her many previous short-story credits include tales for this magazine and for our sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. During the 1970s she wrote several novels, including A Scream Away, under the pseudonym Andrea Harris.

Molly Renquist looked up as her secretary, Lindsey, opened the office door and poked her pretty head in. “Got time to see a lady who doesn’t have an appointment?”

Molly frowned. “Do you know what it’s about?”

“She says she wants you to look into her sister’s death.”

Glancing at her calendar and then her watch, Molly nodded. “Send her in.”

A moment later, Lindsey returned, followed by a tall, beautiful young Latina with lustrous black hair that fell to her shoulders in a rippling cascade. She wore low-heeled pumps and a pale blue dress that failed to hide her voluptuous curves. Other than the small golden hoops in her ears, she wore no jewelry and very little makeup, yet her appearance was striking. Molly reflected that the woman seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place her. Reaching across the desk, she offered her hand and said, “Please have a seat.”

The woman sat on the edge of the comfortable leather chair that had stood in their family room before Tom’s death. Afterward, the sight of it in the house was too painful, but Molly couldn’t bring herself to part with it.

The young woman leaned forward, crossing her ankles, and said softly, in hesitant but grammatical English, “I am Rosa Maria Esmeralda Hernandez. My family has not much money, but I have brought as much as we have. Will you find out why my sister died?”

“What were you told?”

“That she killed herself. They say she was sad because she could not have a child, but that is something she’s known for many years.”

That struck Molly as odd. Had the sister suffered some gross abnormality from birth? Had there been an accident or serious disease? “Was there an autopsy?” she asked.

“Yes, but they will not let us see what they found. The judge has — how do you call it? — sealed the records.”

That piqued Molly’s interest. “And what was your sister’s name?”

“Ramona Wiley.” She looked up as though expecting Molly to recognize the name. “Ramona,” she repeated with emphasis.

Molly started. “The Ramona? The singer and actress?”

The young woman nodded, her wide dark eyes filled with sadness, and Molly realized why she’d seemed familiar. There was a strong resemblance to her famous late sister, who had been known by a single name. If Rosa were wearing an expensive gown, diamonds dangling from her ears and throat, and had enjoyed the services of a professional makeup artist and hairdresser, she could be Ramona’s double.

Ramona’s name had been in the news lately. About a month earlier, her body had been discovered in bed by the housekeeper one morning. As Molly recalled, the husband — who was also her manager and agent — had been out of town at the time, and the medical examiner, James Pearson, had ruled her death a suicide. Molly knew Pearson well. He was a man of unquestionable integrity, and she couldn’t imagine him being less than honest about the case.

Of course, the tabloids had had a field day presenting bizarre speculations, pointing out that her husband was sole heir to a mega-million dollar empire, but the police had quickly ruled him out as a suspect, and the medical examiner had taken the unusual step of holding a press conference to emphasize that the actress’s death had been self-inflicted.

“I wasn’t aware there was any doubt as to the cause of your sister’s death,” Molly said softly. “What exactly do you want me to investigate?”

A spark of anger came into Rosa’s eyes. “My sister would not kill herself. She was a devout Catholic, and she was happy since she came to America. I must know what really happened.” As Rosa became more emotional, her accent thickened.

Molly frowned. “I seem to remember the papers saying she’d been depressed lately.”

“She was upset about something. She called me two days before — before it happened. She was crying — said that she had learned something terrible. But she wouldn’t tell me what it was. She said it was better I didn’t know. I asked her if her marriage was in trouble. Hollywood, you know. Marriages don’t last long here — not like at home.”

Rosa paused to extract a white lace handkerchief from her purse and dabbed her eyes. “She said — and these are her words — ‘My marriage is over. There is no way to repair this.’”

“But she never said what the problem was?”

Miss Hernandez shook her head. “I thought maybe Tony was cheating on her, but she said Tony was not the cause of her troubles. Then she said a strange thing — that it concerned a monstruosidad, a monstrosity. She would not say more.”

“A monstrosity?” Molly asked. “That seems an odd word to use.”

“Not so odd,” Rosa said quietly. She swallowed hard. “There is something you need to know.” She drew a deep breath and looked down at her hands, which were now clasped tightly in her lap.

Molly sensed the girl was going through an inner struggle. What did she think was so terrible she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it? “It’s all right,” she said gently. “I used to be a police officer. I don’t think you can tell me anything I haven’t heard before.”

Rosa hesitated and cleared her throat. “Ramona and I come from a small village in Mexico. Our family is very large. We have fifteen brothers and sisters, many aunts and uncles, and even more cousins. Before Ramona came to Hollywood, we were very poor.”

She swallowed again — hard this time — and seemed to be struggling to force the next words out of her mouth. “Our family is cursed.”

Molly realized Rosa was waiting to see how her words would be taken, and she tried to keep her expression as neutral as possible. Finally the woman went on.

“It began long ago. Our great-grandmother stole her girlfriend’s man. Ever since then, our family has produced few boys — in Mexico, that means fewer people who can make money. Even worse, many of the girls never receive the sign — you know, the sign of womanhood.” The young woman seemed to shrink in her chair as she spoke. “The sign is very important in our culture. A girl is treated like a princess when it comes. But for some of us, it never arrives. We become like unpaid servants to the others. No man will marry us, for we cannot have children, and no one will care for us when we grow old. There are eleven girls in our family and five of us, including Ramona and myself, have been stricken.” She bowed her head and murmured, “Our mother always said she could tell which girls were cursed, even when we were very young.”

“How could she do that?”

“She told us we had lost a precious gift, so God gave us another. She said all of her cursed daughters were” — her lovely mouth twisted into a grimace — “beautiful. I always thought that was” — she hesitated, looking for the right word — “ironico — a badjoke. No man wants to marry us, so what good is it to be beautiful?”

“But Ramona married,” Molly pointed out.

“I believe that was more of a business deal.”

“What do you mean?”

“Almost eight years ago, Anthony Wiley came to our village — I’ve never been sure why. It was during the festival of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There was feasting and celebration, much dancing and singing in the evenings, and a most beautiful church service on the morning of the feast day — flowers and candles everywhere. Even as a child, Ramona had a lovely voice and she was asked to sing on such occasions, and so Tony Wiley heard her. He came to my parents and said that Ramona could make a lot of money if she would come with him to Hollywood. My father said that he would allow such a thing only if she were married.”

She paused and her voice softened. “He didn’t tell Tony about the curse. It was wrong of my father, of course, but you have to understand. He was facing having to support five unmarried daughters for the rest of his life, and Tony was talking about amounts of money we could not even dream of. Such money would make a great difference for our whole family. You can’t really blame my father. Besides, Ramona was sixteen and she wanted very much to leave our village and live in a city with bright lights. So arrangements were made, there was a ceremony at our little church, and Ramona left. Within a year, she was sending us money — enough for my parents to buy a bigger house and for the little ones to go to school. Everyone learned to speak English — Ramona said that was important. We got a telephone and she called us every week.”

“And she seemed happy?” Molly asked.

“Oh, very! She missed us, of course, but she told us about her beautiful clothes, and the wonderful house they had, and all the servants who waited on her. All she had to do was look glamorous and sing. She wanted me to come to America and live with them, but I told her I couldn’t sing, and no one was offering to marry me.”

Rosa stared into her lap, and a tear trickled down her cheek. “I should have gone. Maybe I could have protected her.”

“Protected her from what?” Molly asked. “Hollywood? The family curse?”

The young woman flushed. “I know it sounds foolish to you, but if you could see my family — all my relatives on my mother’s side — you could not dismiss it so easily. Ever since my great-grandmother sinned, our family has suffered. I ask only that you find out what you can.” She stood up. “What do I have to pay you?”

Molly looked at her. Though she was tall, there was an air of fragility about her, and Molly couldn’t help thinking of an orphaned child, though Rosa was obviously neither an orphan nor a child. The family had been receiving money from their wealthy daughter, but now that Ramona was dead, that might not continue, and Molly was not inclined to ask for more than the family could afford. “Write me a check for one dollar now. That will make you officially my client. We’ll come to reasonable terms later.”

Rosa hesitated, and Molly wondered whether the young woman distrusted the promises of Americans on principle. Then she realized that if the Hernandezes had a bank account, it would be in Mexico. “A dollar bill will be fine. I’ll give you a receipt.”

After Rosa left, Molly instructed Lindsey to get on the computer and dig out everything she could find about Ramona, her early career, her husband, any rumors, and the details of her demise. Then she called Danny McRae, her best operative, and instructed him to look into Tony Wiley’s friends, finances, and possible secret relationships with other women. “And see what you can find out about Ramona’s medical history. Was she ever treated for depression?” Molly knew that such matters, usually confidential, were best discovered from women friends, and Danny was good at that. “And talk to her hairdresser, her voice coach, everyone who worked with her.”

Then she looked up the phone number of Anthony Wiley.

That evening Molly sat on a dainty Victorian gold-leaf chair in the enormous living room of Wiley’s plush Bel Aire mansion. As a uniformed maid poured coffee from a silver urn into a fine china cup, Molly looked around and wondered what a sixteen-year-old girl from rural Mexico must have thought and felt when she first entered this house. Had she any notion how much that marble-topped table and those oriental carpets cost?

Across from her in a brocade Italian love seat, Tony Wiley cleared his throat. He was a small, tanned man with a receding hairline and a thin moustache that made him look as though he’d stepped out of a movie from the 1930s. “So you’re investigating my wife’s death,” he said in a slightly nasal tone. “Who hired you?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

He studied her in silence for a moment, then said, “Her family?” He shook his head. “I paid for all of them to attend the funeral. I had the medical examiner speak with them personally. They’re all very religious, and I knew her suicide would be hard on them. I thought they understood.”

“Apparently they still have some questions,” Molly said. She watched the small man stiffen at her words, and decided to approach the matter obliquely. She took a sip of her coffee. “Tell me how you discovered her.”

Wiley’s steel-gray eyes appraised her as he bit his lower lip. Finally he said, “I’m a deal-maker, Ms. Renquist. I live in a world of phones, fax machines, and unending stress. Eight years ago, I was a physical wreck. My blood pressure was soaring; I had constant migraines. My doctor advised me to get away, so I took a month off — rented a little house in rural Mexico. Only my secretary knew how to reach me, and she had orders not to, unless it was a question of life or death.”

He leaned back in the love seat and clasped his carefully manicured hands across his stomach. “By the third week I was bored silly, and upon the advice of the local cantina owner, I went to a tiny village to observe the celebration of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There, in a small adobe church, I heard Ramona sing. She was a child with the body of a woman and the voice of an angel. I knew I had a fortune in the making.”

“So you married this child?” Molly tried hard not to let animosity creep into her voice.

Wiley shrugged. “It was the only way her father would let me take her to the U.S.” He glanced toward the leaded-glass windows, then back at Molly, his gray eyes steady. “As I said, I’m a deal-maker, and in my world, marriage is just another deal. I assume you’ll be poking around in my life, so I won’t claim to have been entirely faithful to her, but my affairs have been very discreet, and she never knew about them.” He sighed. “I treated Ramona very well, Ms. Renquist. Ask anyone.”

Molly fully intended to, but said nothing. Instead, she asked, “Did Ramona ever tell you she believed she was cursed?”

“Ah yes, the family curse. She told me about it years ago. I chalked it up to silly superstition at the time.” He stared into the distance and said softly, “But it was real. Not that anyone could do anything about it.”

“Is that the reason the autopsy results were sealed?”

He straightened, the lines in his face deepened, and his voice became hard. “The results of the autopsy are entirely a private matter.” He stood up and indicated the door. “I believe this discussion is over.”

Back in her car, Molly tried to sort out her impressions. She usually trusted her gut, for over the years she’d discovered that it was pretty accurate. But she didn’t have a clear take on Wiley. He was hiding something; that was for sure. On the other hand, Molly had caught genuine emotional overtones in his voice when he spoke about Ramona. She flashed back to those dark days right after the brain tumor had taken Tom. The sudden emptiness of the house, the stab of pain brought by catching sight of her wedding ring, her reluctance to take it off.

She’d glanced at Wiley’s left hand before leaving. The golden band was still there. Wiley was genuinely grieving, but was it for his wife or for the loss of a further fortune?

The next morning Lindsey greeted Molly as she entered the office. Her brown eyes were flashing with excitement, and she carried a notebook and a manila folder.

“Here’s all the stuff I got on Ramona, boss.” She glanced at the first page of the notebook. “She came on the scene a little more than six and a half years ago when she recorded a bunch of Mexican ballads in Spanish. She’s described as ‘barely eighteen, shy, speaking broken English.’ In the interviews from that time, her husband, who was also her agent and manager, did most of the talking for her.”

Lindsey looked up. “But she must have been a quick study, because less than two years later, she was described as ‘confident,’ even ‘bubbly,’ and ‘speaking fluent English.’ She was singing more popular tunes, appearing on television, and doing personal tours. When she was twenty-two, she made her first movie. The tabloids didn’t have a bad thing to say about her. Their only complaint was that the husband kept the paparazzi at a distance.” She turned the page in her notebook. “And just two months ago, she landed the position of spokesperson for Dazzle Cosmetics. They were going to call her ‘The Quintessential Woman.’”

“Pretty heady stuff for a poor girl from rural Mexico,” Molly said.

Lindsey nodded. “As for the husband, he’s got an ex-wife who says only that he worked too much and cheated on her a couple of times. She claims they had an amicable divorce — I took that to mean she got a good settlement. There were no kids. I couldn’t uncover any gossip about other women. The servants say Ramona and Tony got along, although one of the maids thought Tony acted more like a father than a husband.”

Molly interrupted. “Rosa mentioned that her sister said something about her marriage being over. Any chance that she was thinking of ending it? If so, Tony would have had a lot to lose.”

Lindsey frowned. “I didn’t think to ask, but” — she thumbed through her notes until she found what she was looking for — “both the housekeeper and the personal maid said Ramona didn’t appear to be angry with Tony. In fact, the maid specifically said that her attitude was apologetic. And she also told me that he didn’t appear to be angry, either. He seemed to be trying to comfort her, but nobody has any idea about what. I got the clear impression that all the servants loved her. Most of them are Hispanic and they appreciated that Ramona spoke their language. Apparently she frequently gave them gifts and told them stories about her family. They said she was like one of them.”

Molly considered. Had Ramona, against all odds, become pregnant and lost the baby early on? That might account for her depression and Tony’s efforts to comfort her. But if she’d become pregnant once, there was at least hope it might happen again — and why should it mean the end of her marriage? “What were you able to find out about her death?” she asked.

Lindsey shook her head, making her brown curls tumble about her face. “They were all pretty tight-lipped. Only the housekeeper was willing to talk to me about that day, and she was adamant that Señor Wiley must not find out. I gather everyone was warned about reporters.”

Molly nodded. “And what did the housekeeper say?”

“She said Ramona was not herself earlier that week. She seemed preoccupied and upset. She wasn’t eating. But the day before her death she appeared to be much better — ‘at peace,’ were her exact words. That’s why the housekeeper said it was such a shock to find her dead the next morning.”

Molly interrupted. “It’s a common phenomenon. When a person finally makes the decision to commit suicide, others perceive a calmness about them and mistakenly think they’re getting better.”

Lindsey nodded. “Also, there was a bottle of vodka in her room. The housekeeper said she’d never seen liquor there before — that in fact, the señora seldom drank, and then only a glass or two of wine when they had dinner guests.”

“Any indication what was on her mind?”

“Uh-uh. The servants wouldn’t feel it was their place to ask, but both the housekeeper and the personal maid agreed that something was wrong.”

Molly frowned. “How did it happen that the housekeeper found her instead of the personal maid?”

“Now that’s another interesting thing,” Lindsey said. “The maid’s quite young, probably still in her teens. Her name is Carmen, and she’s from Hermosillo. The morning before she died, Ramona gave the girl money and told her to go visit her parents.” Lindsey looked up, brows raised. “Do you think she didn’t want the girl to be the one who found her?”

Molly considered. “It certainly looks that way.” She told Lindsay to put a call in to the medical examiner. Then she took the manila folder, which contained copies of some of the articles her secretary had collected as well as photographs of Ramona that had been taken over the years. Placing the pictures in chronological order across the top of her desk, Molly saw the transformation of a shy young woman into a Hollywood personality. The earliest photo was of a pretty Latina, no more than a child, with an air of barely concealed bewilderment in her dark eyes. From left to right, the pictures showed a progression. Ramona had become more confident, comfortable with the aura of glamour. She’d learned how to woo the camera. In the most recent photo, she wore a hot-pink sequined strapless gown that displayed her cleavage favorably. Her signature diamonds dangled at her ears and throat; her head tilted slightly to the right, and her full luscious lips displayed a mischievous smile. The note on the back indicated the picture had been a preliminary shot for the “Quintessential Woman” campaign.

Molly stared at the wide brown eyes looking out of the picture. Where was the girl who’d grown up with a curse upon her? Was she still in there, afraid, ashamed, alone?

Awhile later, Danny McRae came into the office. A small man with a boyish face and sandy hair, Danny was blessed with the best characteristic an investigator could have: People didn’t particularly notice him, and when they did, they never felt threatened. He had a gift for getting others to confide in him. He sat down and whipped out his notebook, but he didn’t bother to look at it. Danny had a photographic memory.

“What did you find out?” Molly asked.

He grinned, momentarily exposing the small gap between his two front teeth. “First, Wiley’s friends. He doesn’t have many — not social friends, anyhow. They all seemed to be business associates. Their stories match closely, however. They agree that Wiley and his wife were more like agent and client or father and daughter than lovers, but they all said he respected and protected Ramona. A couple of them told me they assumed he had other female interests, but no one knew anything for certain. It seems Tony Wiley was unusually circumspect for someone in the Hollywood life.”

Danny closed his green eyes for a moment, as though he were reading the inside of his eyelids. “He uses a very reputable accounting agency, and the scuttlebutt is that there’s nothing funny going on. He managed all of Ramona’s money, and a couple of deals went south, but apparently they were legitimate investments. The upshot is that she made a lot of money and he made the money grow.

“As for her medical history, I was able to find out that she had a couple of recent appointments with a Dr. Hugh Blackman — a gynecologist who specializes in infertility problems. It seems she saw him shortly after she and Tony were married, and some fairly minor procedure was done at that time. No indication what she saw him about lately. Otherwise, she avoided doctors. Except for a couple of sore throats over the years, she’s been very healthy.”

Molly digested that information for a minute, and then said, “But for some reason she recently decided to see not just any doctor, but an infertility specialist. This from a woman who supposedly has known for years that she’s infertile.” She turned to Danny and explained, “Her family blames it on a curse.”

He blinked and shrugged. “Maybe she’d been in the U.S. long enough to stop believing in curses. Maybe she just wanted to know why she couldn’t have children.”

Molly nodded. “Why don’t you get friendly with one of Dr. Blackman’s nurses? Don’t ask about Ramona specifically, but inquire about some of the unusual genetic reasons for female infertility. Ask if they’ve seen any such cases lately.”

As he headed for the door, Molly added, “And check out the backgrounds of the servants and anyone else who might have had access to the house that night.”

As Danny was leaving, Lindsey buzzed to say the medical examiner was on the line. Molly picked up and said, “Hey, Jim.”

“What can I do for you, Molly?”

“I know you did the autopsy on Ramona Wiley.”

He drew an audible breath. “Those records have been sealed. I can’t discuss them with you.”

“I realize that. But you did have a press conference regarding the case. You said it was definitely suicide.”

“No doubt about it, Molly. Pills and liquor. If you’re wondering whether someone else killed her, you’re wasting your time.”

“Can you tell me whether you know why she killed herself?”

Silence. At last he said, “She didn’t leave a note, if that’s what you mean.”

Molly persisted. “But you do know why?”

“I can’t talk about it, Molly. It’s just tragic.”

“Doesn’t her family have the right to know?”

He sighed. “The situation is complex, and it’s not my decision. The court has ruled.”

“One last question,” Molly said. “Was she dying?”

“No. She was healthy as a horse.”

Molly hung up and buried her face in her hands. What on earth could be so terrible as to make Ramona kill herself, and why was it so important that it be kept secret?

Rosa called that afternoon, her voice pleading and impatient. “Have you learned anything?”

Molly drew a deep breath and considered how best to word what she had to say. “So far, Miss Hernandez, there’s no indication that your sister was murdered.”

“So you found nothing?” she asked.

“On the contrary.” Molly tried to keep her voice mild. “Everything we’ve discovered points to her suicide.”

There was a long silence on the phone, so long that she wondered whether Rosa had simply left the phone off the hook and walked away. But at last she said, “If my sister really did kill herself, I need to know why.”

Molly assured her that she and her staff were still working on it.

That night Molly fell asleep on the sofa listening to Ramona’s CDs. Her voice was soft and throaty in the low registers, clear and crystalline in the upper ones. Both carried an undertone of wisdom and sorrow that tugged at heart strings. Molly dreamed of a small dark-eyed girl who whispered sadly, “There is no escape.”

In the morning, Danny dropped a sheaf of papers on her desk. “First, all of the servants checked out. The housekeeper was the only one in the place the night Ramona died, and she’s clean. They’ve got a state-of-the-art burglar system, and the housekeeper swears she set it that night, so no one else could have broken in.”

He looked at her with tired eyes. “I did what you told me to. Made friends with Blackman’s nurse. She was eager to tell me that Blackman treated a lot of celebrities, and that Ramona was one of them. I tried to be as casual as possible and suggested that the singer and her husband might be trying to start a family. She said she couldn’t tell me, of course. That was confidential. But she admitted she’d been curious herself, and tried to peek into Ramona’s medical records, and here’s the strange thing: The records were never returned to the files after her visits. Blackman must have kept them.”

“Why would he do that?”

“That’s what I asked. She said sometimes he holds onto them in order to consult with another doctor, but she didn’t think that was the reason, because even after Ramona’s death, the records never showed up.”

Molly frowned. “So what did you do?”

“I’d convinced her I was a journalist doing research on the causes of infertility, and she gave me a lot of references. I spent the night on the Internet. The results are in front of you. I think the pages on top have the answer, although the first time through, I overlooked that condition. It didn’t seem to apply. Later I got to thinking and I reconsidered.”

“So?”

He grinned widely. “It’s complicated. Read for yourself.”

She spent the next hour reading and rereading the tract he’d found, trying to assimilate the scientific aspects. Then she looked through the rest of the material Danny had collected and came to the conclusion that he was right. She was pretty sure she now knew why Ramona killed herself and why Tony had hushed it up. But she needed to speak with Wiley to make certain. She glanced at the clock on her desk. Rosa was due in a couple of hours.

Molly found Tony Wiley in his luxurious fourteenth-floor office. His secretary insisted Mr. Wiley couldn’t be disturbed, but Molly pushed past her. She found him behind a huge cherrywood desk piled with manila folders, the phone ringing, the fax machine spewing out paper. He looked up, annoyed, and said, “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Okay. Just listen,” Molly said. “I think I know everything anyway. You see, I’ve learned about AIS.”

He paled and waved at the secretary who was still standing in the doorway, looking apologetic. “Hold all my calls, Christine.” To Molly, he said, “Sit down.” He waited.

She drew a deep breath and began. “You first took Ramona to Dr. Blackman shortly after you were married. I assume she had some difficulty with her — shall we say — wifely duties?”

He looked irritated. “Blackman said she had a birth defect, easily corrected with a nonsurgical procedure, which he performed. At the time, I assumed that was what the so-called curse was about.”

“Did he say anything else? Recommend further tests?”

“As a matter of fact,” he said slowly, “he did. He took me aside and said that he suspected she had a rare genetic condition. That there might be a small increased possibility of cancer. He wanted to do more tests. He said even if the tests were positive, relatively minor surgery could prevent the cancer. But when I explained this to Ramona, she was adamant. No more doctors, no tests, and above all, no surgery. You have to understand she grew up in circumstances where people rarely consulted doctors. They were associated with death.”

“And she wasn’t worried about cancer?”

Wiley shook his head. “She said there were lots of women in her family who had the same condition and none of them had ever gotten cancer.”

“I assume something changed lately that made her go back to Blackman.”

He chewed on his lower lip. “She didn’t tell me she’d made an appointment. I found out her hairdresser was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of months ago. That’s probably what started her worrying.”

“And this time the doctor did the tests and told her she had AIS.”

Tony Wiley covered his eyes with his hands. “Damn fool doctor,” he muttered. “He should have told me, too. I should have been with her, but I had no idea.”

“So how did you find out?”

“She told me. She was in tears, freaked out, actually. I said it didn’t matter. She was the same person she’d always been. I wasn’t going to divorce her.”

Molly was surprised. “You would have stayed married, knowing?”

He shrugged. “Hey, this is Hollywood. Unconventional marriages are common. Besides, she was easy to get along with.” He paused.

“Also, she made a lot of money for you, and you managed to have your affairs on the side.”

He colored and his voice became sharper. “You make me sound crass. Whether you believe it or not, I cared about Ramona. I did my best to assure her nothing would change. I would never have gone out of town if I’d realized she was still so upset. But after a few days, she seemed to calm down. We had already made an appointment with a therapist — we were going to work everything out. She actually appeared happy the day I left.” He put his elbows on his desk and his head in his hands. “What are you going to do?” he mumbled.

“I have to meet with Rosa this afternoon.”

“You can’t tell her!” He looked up at Molly, his face actually livid.

“Don’t you think she and her family have a right to know? What about the other ‘cursed’ sisters?”

He stood up. “Consider the consequences! How do you think their families and neighbors will treat them if it comes out? Those people don’t have access to therapists to help them deal with such information! At least now, they have a place in their society, albeit a lesser one. But if you tell them—” He broke off.

His passion surprised Molly. He’d obviously given the matter a lot of thought. And he had a point. But her client was paying her to discover the truth. What was the right thing to do?

Molly was still agonizing when Rosa arrived in her office late that afternoon. The young Latina sat down in Tom’s old chair and looked at Molly apprehensively. “What have you found out?”

Molly studied the beautiful woman and pain shot through her heart. Rosa looked so much like her famous sister had when she first came to the U.S. It was almost as though Molly were speaking to the younger Ramona. The thought struck her: What if she had had the chance to prevent the singer from discovering she had AIS?

“I wish I could answer all your questions, but all I can tell you is that Ramona definitely took her own life. There is no possibility of foul play.”

“But why?” Sorrow and disbelief were evident in her face.

“I’m afraid she chose to keep her reasons to herself.” Molly felt a stab of guilt as she spoke the words which were not entirely true. Yet Ramona had chosen not to tell her family that she and her beautiful sisters, aunts, and nieces had inherited androgen insensitivity syndrome — that their lush bodies, genetically programmed to be male, were producing plenty of testosterone, but a broken gene on their X chromosomes prevented the hormone from doing its job. Molly didn’t explain that nature, in fickle efficiency, had been converting the useless testosterone into estrogen since they’d been in their mother’s wombs, altering their physical development so that by the time of birth they appeared to be normal, healthy little girls, when in fact they were highly feminized males.

Rosa looked pensive. “I have been doing much thinking. Perhaps Hollywood was the worst place for Ramona to live. Here there is so much fuss made about celebrity women who are having babies — even when they aren’t married. They show off their big tummies like — how do you say? — trophies. Maybe — maybe Ramona worried they would wonder why she and Tony didn’t have any children. Maybe she felt like a fraud being called ‘The Quintessential Woman.’”

Molly held her breath, stunned. Rosa had come dangerously close to the truth.

The woman reached into her purse to pay Molly’s fee, but the investigator waved her protests off. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be more helpful.” After Rosa left, Molly leaned back in her chair and reflected that she couldn’t have accepted a fee when she was withholding vital information. Yet, in some strange way, she felt a much deeper obligation to Ramona — a woman she’d never met but whose recorded voice would always haunt her.

Copyright © 2010 Stephanie Kay Bendel