Tansi looked relieved. “As it is, Jimmy gives the makeup people a challenge, what with his sleepless nights, those bags under his eyes, the sloppy shaving…”
So we chatted idly throughout lunch, and Tansi lingered, even having a cigarette after the sandwich. Mercy kept looking at me.
“Edna?” Tansi offered me a cigarette.
“Remember when Jake gave me his pack of cigarettes?” I asked. Tansi shook her head. “Well, I just smoked the last of that pack, up in my room. Last night. I’ve also made a vow never to smoke another cigarette.”
Mercy spoke up. “I’ll never stop smoking. Sorry.”
“Me, too,” Tansi added.
I reached inside my purse, and withdrew something. Mercy watched as I dropped a matchbook onto the cluttered table, and all three of us watched it fall between a plate and a glass. It just lay there.
“I thought you didn’t want a cigarette, Edna,” Tansi said.
“I don’t. I told you I’ll never smoke again.”
“Then…” She glanced down at the matchbook, and I saw color rise in her face. She looked at Mercy, who was staring at her, holding her breath.
“What?”
“I believe these are yours,” I said.
“No, I don’t think so…”
Emphatically, “Oh, yes.” I breathed in. “I’m sorry, Tansi, I really am, but when Jake offered me a cigarette, you did, too. You even lit my cigarette. And you slipped your matchbook across the table at me. Later I recalled picking it up, dropping it in my purse. Last night, lighting the last of Jake’s cigarettes, I reached for the matches, and I remembered. I had taken them from you.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Well, dear, I do. Sad to say. Do you see what they say?” All three of us glanced down at the matchbook, face up. Stamped in gold on the dull brown surface was Ruth’s Grill. With a telephone exchange. And the slogan, “Cocktails and Steaks.”
I pushed the matches across the table. “Take them, Tansi. They’re yours.”
“They’re not.”
“Tell me, Tansi, how did you happen to have matches from a restaurant across the street from Carisa’s apartment? A place you said-more than once-you never went to. A neighborhood you studiously avoided. A neighborhood you insisted I stay out of-fear for my safety.”
“I must have got them somehow-from Jimmy, maybe.” Tansi stared into my face. “Or maybe from Jake. He went there a lot. He told you that.”
“I sat in the same grubby restaurant one afternoon with Alyce and Alva Strand, in the same spot where Carisa sat when she was with another woman. And the two were arguing, Carisa yelling at her. They just saw the back of the other woman’s head…”
“But you can’t blame that on me. Really, Edna, that’s impossible.” She looked around the room, as though for a familiar face. When she looked back, she smiled. “I don’t like this, Edna. We’re friends, you know.”
I sighed. “We are friends, Tansi. I’ve known you since you were a baby.” My mind wandered a bit. “I remember…”
“Edna.” Mercy touched my wrist, softly. “Maybe Tansi can explain.”
Tansi, a little hysterical, “I just did. Didn’t you hear me? I don’t know how I have to explain such a trivial thing as…as a matchbook. I’ve had dozens over the years. From all over. I pick them up. Smokers pick them up. Just as you did. You said you picked mine up, no?”
I sucked in my breath. “Do you remember the afternoon you drove me to the hotel? You were in your new car and…”
“What does my car have to do with it?”
“Manuel Vega’s granddaughter recalled seeing a woman sitting in a car in front of the apartment the night Carisa was killed. She was on a bus, but looked, and thought she saw Jimmy running out of the apartment building. Of course, we learned that it was Tommy, but she thought it was Jimmy. She thought he was joining a woman who was waiting in a car.”
“That wasn’t me. I’ve never gone there.”
I rushed my words. “I asked Connie about the car. She couldn’t describe the woman, but the car she recalled. Vividly. A brand-new Chevy Bel Air. Shiny turquoise with white top.”
Tansi shook her head. “So? Do you know how many such cars there in L.A., Edna? Dozens. We’re car people out here, and it’s a popular car. We like our cars…”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “That’s why Connie mentioned it. She likes cars, too. And movie stars. Like Jimmy. But that got me to thinking. Tommy ran out-Carisa didn’t let him in-but he was not joining the woman in the car, waiting there, watching. There had to be a reason Connie would notice, even if it didn’t quite register with her. She obviously sensed someone waiting in front of the place where she lived. Like a lot of kids, she’s in tune with street life. She spent her hours anticipating the visits of James Dean, her idol. So it stayed with her. Tansi, I think you were there that afternoon. I think you went there, for whatever reason, despite what you’ve said, and watched. You were watching for Jimmy, too. And you saw Tommy run out. And you went in to see Carisa…”
“No, for God’s sake, no!” Tansi thundered. “This is preposterous. Really, Edna.” A tinny laugh. “This is not one of your melodramatic fictions, you know.”
I sighed. “I only wish, Tansi. But my instinct tells me…”
Tansi swirled around in her chair, then looked at Mercy, her eyes searching her face. “Mercy, tell her. Are you hearing this story? A matchbook and a car. A thousand of one of them, hundreds of the other. Circumstances.”
Mercy looked down at her hands, and she seemed surprised they were shaking. There was sadness in her voice. “Edna.”
I held up my hand. “You must have gone to the apartment after Tommy fled, somehow got inside, argued with Carisa-probably about the letters she sent Jimmy and Warner, including the horrible one that very day to Warner, the threat about Confidential; and I know you probably didn’t want to go there. And the argument escalated and you threw that statue…”
“There!” Tansi thundered again. “Listen to yourself, Edna. Think about what you’re saying.”
I waited. Then: “You’re going to say you were never in that apartment.”
“Yes, I am saying that.”
“But you went.”
“Edna, talk to Detective Cotton. We’ve been through this, all of us. I was fingerprinted. We all were. Mercy-not you, but Jimmy’s prints, Tommy’s, even Nell’s. Nell was there. That surprised me. Did you think about that? Jake, his prints were all over the place. Lydia. She’s the one to look at. Jake, he’d paid Carisa off. He told me he went there a dozen times. He pleaded with her…” She stopped, out of breath.
“And so he did. And everyone liked to believe Lydia killed her. Nell believed the story. You finally got her to move out of Lydia’s room and into your own place. Nell started telling everyone that Lydia did the crime.”
“Everyone believed that.”
“I didn’t. Detective Cotton didn’t.”
“How do you know? Why didn’t she…well, her prints…Edna, you know that Detective Cotton said…he told me, in fact…my prints were nowhere inside that apartment. Nowhere.” She sat back, triumphant.
“That’s right. Your prints were nowhere to be found,” I sucked in my cheeks. “That got me to thinking. How is it possible that the statue had only one partial print of Jimmy’s fingers, and a lot of smudges? And whoever rifled through her desk, messed up her letters, and probably absconded with a letter or two, left no prints there. None. A murder done in anger, unpremeditated, would mean that the frantic amateur would invariably leave telltale evidence behind. But nothing.”
“I told you, Edna. I never went there.”
“As I say, it got me to thinking. Then I remembered. Mercy and I went there right after leaving Warner’s cocktail party. I remember how we went in our grand, rather elegant attire-our fancy dresses and, of course, our gloves. What women would go to a party like that without gloves? I had them, Mercy had them, and, I recall, you had them. All the women had them. It’s what you do at such a party. If you left the party and went there, sat in your car waiting, you must have gone straight from the party. In your gloves, Tansi. No prints. Earlier that day Warner had got that last, horrible letter and his office was in an uproar. That panic punctuated the party, I recall, though largely undiscussed. But you were bothered. So you went there, rushing from the party…”