“Good Lord,” she said with a breathless laugh. “The state of me. I swear.”
“Is there still tea inside?” I asked, a bit impulsively.
Barbara nodded while wiping her eyes with her fingers. “And a kettle. Nothing criminally suspicious about all that, I suppose.”
“Come on, then,” I said. “Let’s sit down in the office. I’ll make the tea this time.”
Again she nodded and waddled back through the tape, barely disturbing it with her small frame. I made it through with almost as much ease, but Jake tore it down entirely. I shot him a look, which he ignored. To my surprise, Barbara sat down in the chair we found Leslie Wheeler in the previous morning. She sat nervously, her knees together and back hunched, like a school kid waiting to be scolded by the principal. At her feet on the bare floor — the rug was gone now — about a dozen crude newsletters were fanned out. The paper was yellow and crinkled, a hand-drawn legend photocopied at the top of each one: The Silent Film Appreciation Society. The issue on top, featuring a fuzzy publicity photo of Rudolph Valentino, was from Fall/Winter 1989. I decided she and Leslie must have been at this for quite some time.
“There are Typhoo bags in the cupboard above the hot plate, Mr. Woodard.”
I found them, looked over to Jake, who shook his head no. While I heated the kettle on the hot plate, I glanced over at a corkboard on the wall beside an old plastic telephone. On it several notes were tacked, containing movie titles, event reminders. A program from a Lillian Gish retrospective at the Cinémathèque. And a few photographs of Barbara and Leslie that looked to span a great many years. In each of them the two women held on to one another in a tight embrace, grinning broadly or looking at each other. I began to better comprehend Barbara’s grief.
The kettle squealed and I poured two cups that I brought out to the front room. Barbara took hers with a pained smile. I sat at the table, next to Jake.
Barbara sipped cautiously from her cup and said, “I’m surprised you’re still here. In Los Angeles, that is. I’m afraid you can’t help us anymore.”
“I’d still like to try,” I said. “You see, Ms. Tilitson—”
“Barbara. Please.”
“Barbara, we came around here hoping to find a way to get in touch with you. I hate to alarm you, but somebody tried to kill me last night.”
“Kill you? Good God, that’s terrible.”
“You’re telling him,” Jake piped up.
Barbara said, “This damned town. Forgive my language, but really.”
“I don’t think it’s just this town, and frankly the police don’t seem to, either. I think it has something to do with what happened to Leslie. And with Angel of the Abyss.”
She seemed to hold her breath for a moment, her eyes focusing on something invisible in the center of the room like cats sometimes do. When she snapped out of it, she shivered slightly and heaved a deep sigh. Her face was drawn. Though only a day older than the last time I saw her, she seemed as though she’d aged significantly since then.
“Forgive me if I sound accusatory, Barbara,” I said, followed by a protracted silence in the room, “but is there something you’re not telling me? Something I should know?”
“Mr. Woodard,” she began. “Graham. How much do you know about Grace Baron?”
“Not much,” I confessed. “Whatever the available bios and websites have to say. It’s not a lot. I don’t gather anyone really knows that much about her.”
“Some people do,” Barbara countered. “Leslie did. She knew quite a great deal about Grace. And of course as long as she remained a distant memory and her only film remained lost, no one could really be bothered by anything she knew.”
I pursed my mouth and breathed through my nose, frustrated and confused. It was the same aggravating question posed over and over again: how could something so old have riled up so many people?
“You’re waiting for me to tell you everything,” Barbara went on at last. “But I’m afraid I can’t. We were close, Leslie and I. But she didn’t tell me everything. In fact, ever since she came into possession of that damned reel — me and my mouth again, I’m so sorry. Honestly, I never talk like this…”
“What about the reel?” I said, cutting her off.
“It’s just like she…closed off, I guess you could say. Shut me out, to some extent. That reel, and the promise of the rest of them, seemed to mean more to Leslie than anything else in the world.”
“More than just her love of old movies?” Jake asked. I’d nearly forgotten he was there, but it was a good question.
“Oh, yes. Heavens, yes. We’d been involved with a few terrifically exciting projects over the years, and by God it was something we shared together. We found Losers Weepers together, at an estate sale in Sawtelle back in ’92.” She laughed girlishly at the memory. “It was our bond, our glue. Not this time. Not with the Grace Baron picture. That Leslie kept all to herself. She didn’t really want me anywhere near the thing, or at least that’s how I felt.”
“And she brought me into it because of my remoteness from it all,” I mused aloud. “From it, and the both of you. From Los Angeles.”
“Apparently so, yes. I don’t know why anyone would want to harm you over this, Graham. I really don’t. But I’m sorry about it and I want you to believe me, Leslie would never have asked you out here if she’d have thought for a second something like that could happen.”
I nodded solemnly and sipped at my tea. It was going cold.
“Did you ever meet this Mrs. Sommer?” I asked her.
“You mean the woman from whom Leslie got the footage in the first place? Yes, I met her once, quite briefly. It was when Leslie picked the reel up — I went with her, though she tried like hell to put me off.”
“What was she like? How did she end up with it?”
“Mrs. Sommer was fairly ordinary, I suppose. A bit awkward, socially. She told us the reel had belonged to her father, who died and left behind a small estate that included it.”
“Did she know what she had?”
“Not at all. In fact she held on to it for more than a year before she stumbled upon a magazine article that mentioned Angel and she remembered it gathering dust someplace. After a little research, she realized she had a treasure and ended up finding us — well, Leslie — by our little website.”
“I wonder,” Jake muttered. I turned to him and raised my eyebrows. He lowered his and went on: “I was just wondering whether the cops have a lead on this lady. Maybe she decided the footage was too valuable and wanted it back? Like, real bad.”
“Did you or Leslie pay her anything for it?” I asked Barbara.
“Not that I’m aware of. She agreed to let us take care of preserving it. I’m sure Leslie would have been quite clear that the reel would remain her property.”
“What about the rest of the picture? I was told there might be more reels, in time.”
“My impression was that Mrs. Sommer hadn’t yet catalogued the entire estate. There were some other films — nothing rare or valuable — but the notion was there could still be more, maybe even other parts of Angel. Of course, that was all between her and Leslie. I had very little to do with it, I’m sorry to say.”
She crinkled her eyes and touched her mouth. The moment passed as quickly as it came on.
I said: “Do you remember where this Sommer woman lived, Barbara? I think I’d like to pay her a visit.”
“It was in the Valley. Sherman Oaks. I remember.”
I made another couple cups of tea, but I didn’t touch mine. We were all quiet for a while, but I still had one more question for Barbara.