Nothing especially unexpected he’d skipped over and missed before. The usual suspects. More than a few names he knew from the soaps, but couldn’t put a face to. A young Linda Blair from The Exorcist, who was on the autograph circuit nowadays. A nice Sylvia Sidney, the penmanship as revealing of her age as all the wrinkles she’d accumulated late in life. A hasty John Houseman, who had gone from winning an Oscar for The Paper Chase to the TV series based on the movie to those TV commercials for — Murray couldn’t remember what.
It would have been wonderful to stumble into the signature of Houseman’s old partner from the Mercury Theater days, Orson Welles, as well. Welles, always someone ripe to pay a premium for the great man. But finding Houseman and Welles together was as likely as falling into a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on the same sheet of paper.
Murray clucked at his good fortune when he came upon the bold and elegant signature of Diana Demarest, her penmanship grade-school impeccable, filling almost all the page, in the vibrant red ink that had become a Diana Demarest trademark.
If he had seen it before he’d quoted the gent a price, he would have had to go up by at least a thousand. Fifteen hundred. Maybe another two thousand over the eight hundred he first quoted. The six-five-oh he wound up paying a bigger bargain now than anything at the local Save-Mart.
Diana was always a hot catch, but never more so than after her disappearance, again when she was officially declared dead seven years later. Her autograph became a rarity, rarely found on the open market, and coveted by collectors around the globe. He had clients who’d fall over themselves to own it.
He began to fantasize about the bidding war he could start if he chose to go that route, instead of putting the signature in the safe deposit box along with others of rising value that he was saving for retirement and a Malibu condo with a view.
Murray put the glass to the signature, adjusting position until it came into perfect focus, moving the rectangular lens left and right and back again, then dancing it around the page.
Letter perfect and no question about its authenticity, but there was something...
What’s it, Murray? he asked himself. What do you see that’s not to your liking, that’s not right? What’s the bother putting a question mark on your mind?
He set the book aside to ponder the question over his tea. It had grown cold. He was halfway to giving it a warm-up shot in the microwave when the answer came to him.
Murray charged back to the desk and checked the autograph book.
Yes! There it was, what was bothering him.
He reached for the phone and autodialed his son.
“Yeah, Pop, what’s up?”
Murray quickly explained, his heart pounding excitement so loud, like a Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich was beating on the sticks, that he had trouble hearing his own voice.
When he finished, Mickey said, “Fine, Pop. Now slow down and say it so I can understand you. You’re telling me that the autograph is genuine, right?”
“Right. I’d swear it on your dear mother’s gravestone.”
“And what else?”
“Genuine, but wrong.”
“Wrong because?”
“Diana signed with the lower case d on both names. That’s how she signed her autograph when she was just starting out and unsure of herself, the same as Greer Garson did. Later, when she became the giant star she became, she did it the right way, with two capital Ds, like Greer Garson did when she became big.”
“What I’m hearing is that the collector got her when Diana was just starting out... So what, Pop?”
“That’s the half of it, Mickey. Whoever’s autograph book this was, that person wrote the date it was begun on the inside front cover. The date the last autograph was collected is on the inside back cover.”
Murray recited the dates.
“Diana Demarest was already the big star by then.”
Mickey played them back at him and, after a brief silence, said, “She also was already among the missing by then.”
“And that’s the other half,” Murray said. “Diana Demarest was not only missing by then, but she’d been legally declared dead.”
Mickey told him, “Sit tight, Pop. I’m on my way over there soon as I finish up with this call from London I’ve had hanging on the other line.”
The day after returning to Los Angeles, Mickey headed for the meeting Coopersmith had set for him with Diana Demarest’s sister.
Atwater was a neighborhood in transition between the east edge of Los Feliz and the onset of Glendale, close to Echo Park, but not part of anyplace in particular. It was the “bargain basement” of the real estate market, filled with rows of small homes on tiny lots, in various styles of architecture reflecting their decade of construction, and existing in harmony along soldierly lines of neatly kept front lawns of brown grass and FOR SALE signs.
Alice Buckingham’s house was from the gingerbread school of design, cute and quaint inside a white picket fence, the slanted roof in need of some new shingles to replace the ones blown away by recent windstorms, the woodwork also showing evidence of wind damage, but overall a credit to the neighborhood.
She was at the front door within a minute of Mickey ringing the bell, an expectant look on her attractive face, his name on her exotic lips, a sensual glimmer in her translucent blue eyes that he’d never before observed in a woman of her age, which he figured to be about fifty. She was buried inside a bulky terry cloth robe, her hair hidden under a towel the same pink shade.
The robe slipped apart when she pushed open the screen door and welcomed him inside, pointing him to the living room, where she had freshly brewed coffee and home-baked brownies set out in anticipation of his visit.
Mickey averted his eyes at the flash of tight pink flesh, but not fast enough for her to miss noticing. She blushed, but otherwise said nothing. She struck a provocative pose settling in the easy chair across from his spot on the sofa. She unwrapped the towel and dropped it on the worn carpeting, shook loose the freed bushel of snow white hair and groomed it with a few head tosses and her long, lean fingers.
“Smitty called and told me what you’re planning about my late sister,” Alice said, “this Absolutely Alive tour you just paid me so much money for to acquire the rights.” Her tone was tinged in amazement, while her voice conjured up mind pictures of sailing vessels being drawn to the rocks by a siren’s call. “Frankly, I’m surprised Diana, big a star as she was, is still worth so much after so many years, but no argument from me, Mr. Barnum. Frankly, I am not financially well off of late and can use your generous advance to pay off a ton of debts.”
“A lot more where that came from, Mrs. Buckingham.”
“Miss. Always the bridesmaid, that’s me. If anything, I’ve made a successful transition from bridesmaid to old maid.” She unleashed a laugh and her expression welcomed Mickey to join in.
Mickey smiled and sipped at his coffee. “I’m surprised,” he said, “given how—” And stopped short of finishing the thought.
Alice Buckingham finished it for him. “How well preserved I appear to be? Well, I am that, Mickey, if I may be so bold. And I’m Alice.”
“Be so bold, Alice.”
“Frankly, I’ve never been one to stand on formality. I have always taken care of my body. Clean mind. Clean body. Take your pick.” A pixie laugh. “Who said that? Not that it matters. It’s a philosophy I seem to have acquired quite naturally, ages upon ages ago.”
Alice sent over a devilish grin, started patting her robe in search of something, her hands momentarily fixating on her breasts before they slid down into the pockets and withdrew an old-fashioned cigarette case with a burnished gold finish, the size of a CD, and a matching slimline lighter.