“We’ll talk, Lorena. I promise.”
“No, no,” she insisted. “Call me. Do you know how rare it is in L.A. to talk to someone who listens to you?”
When Liz Grable was called to the phone in the hair salon, she began talking immediately, her voice loud, angry. “You were supposed to call this morning, Tony. I want my goddamn key.”
I broke in. “Miss Grable, I’m afraid…it’s Edna Ferber calling.”
Silence, heavy breathing. In the background women’s high-pitched voices, a lazy voice on the radio. Finally, Liz spoke into the receiver, her words clipped, wary. “Miss Ferber? What do you want?”
“We haven’t spoken…”
“I’m at work. I’m busy.” She repeated, “What do you want?”
Good question, I reflected: what did I want? Ava’s comments had me mulling over the circumstances of the murder, prodding me to dwell on the night of the murder and the people-the players-involved. Who was where that fateful night? And, of course, missing from the equation was Liz Grable. Tony admitted to calling her from the Paradise Bar amp; Grill, but claimed she wasn’t at home.
“I was wondering if you’d join me for lunch.”
She didn’t answer at first. Someone nearby called her name. “What?”
I repeated my invitation. “I thought it would be nice…”
Bluntly, her mouth too close to the receiver. “Why?”
“Liz, we barely had time to talk at Ava’s when we met.”
She gave out a false tinny laugh. “I wonder why.” Her voice had a whiny, hollow tone, as annoying as grit in your eye, and it baffled me that she believed she could be an actress. Perhaps in silent pictures, one more fledgling actress tied to the railroad tracks with the locomotive barreling down at her. The Maiden’s Mistake; or, How Lizzie Caught the Train.
A deep breath. “I’m curious about something.”
“Like what?”
“Your…perspective on the murder.”
“Max?”
“Yes.”
A heartbeat. A whisper. “I have nothing to say.”
“A short conversation.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” A slight, phony laugh.
“People don’t let you talk, Liz,” I began. “Tony and Ethan dominate, and Frank…well…”
“Is a bastard,” she finished for me.
“It’s unfair to you, Liz.”
“You said it.”
“That’s why I thought…well, you must have ideas. You’ve been around…”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t know.”
Exhausting, this disingenuous probing on my part. Liz, the unfriendly witness-to use that sickening and destructive phrase so happily employed by the HUAC in Washington. Are you now or have you ever been…?
“I’d like to hear you.”
“I don’t think so.”
I shifted gears, so blatant a move I expected her to slam down the phone. “We started talking about Cimarron that night. You mentioned my heroine Sabra Cravat, the land rush, your family settling there. The Sooners. Your family in Oklahoma.”
The abrupt shift in my words startled, but I had little time for the diplomatic niceties of journalistic interviews. The train was coming down the track. Excitedly, Liz told me, “My grandpa was late for the land grab then, so we missed out, but he had some wild stories.”
“I wish he’d been someone I’d interviewed when I was there.”
She tsked. “Too bad. Yeah, but you’d have to talk to the dead.” She considered her line funny because she chuckled.
“That’s a problem I have when I research the past.”
“A killer, no?” Another sigh. She covered the receiver and her muffled voice addressed someone nearby. She came back on the line. “All right, Miss Ferber, I can get out of here early afternoon. Say one o’clock?”
I agreed to meet her at Jack’s Luncheonette two blocks over on Hollywood. “One o’clock,” I stressed.
“I know how to tell time.”
When the taxi dropped me off at Jack’s, she was already standing in the doorway. Nervously, she shook my hand, a quick, blustery gesture, and then mumbled something about almost changing her mind. As the waitress seated us. Liz told me over her shoulder, “I’m not one to talk about people, you know.”
“Neither am I, Liz.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Hey, you make living talking about people.”
I grinned. “But they’re not real. I make them up.”
“I wouldn’t be too happy seeing myself in one of your books.”
“Why not?”
She tilted her head and rubbed an ear. She held up the menu in front of her face, shielding her mouth. “I’m the dumb blonde who’s got dreams that get her nowhere. That picture is all over the movie screen now, that kind of broad, and it ain’t the real me. I ain’t daffy.”
I made eye contact with her. “You shouldn’t let other folks tell you what you are, Liz. That’s a secret most women don’t know. Invent yourself, and stick with it.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, sure. Nobody believes that I got a brain. I mean, Tony thinks he’s smarter than me.”
I assumed my Magnolia Ravenal Southern-belle voice. “Get out of here!”
For the first time she laughed out loud. I joined her.
We ordered sandwiches and coffee. “I like your dress,” she said. “It goes great with your white hair.”
She sat back, relaxed. The waitress filled water glasses and Liz frowned at her retreating back. “A girl that skinny should never wear her hair like that.”
I hadn’t noticed. “Tell me something, Liz.” I put down my glass. “You were the one who knocked on Max’s door the night he died, right?”
The question, hurled so brutally at her, stunned her.
She’d been sipping water, a gingerly movement she’d obviously appropriated from some Jean Harlow movie, but my words made her sputter. Water dribbled down the side of the glass, and she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes darkened, scared. For a second, she reached up to check on her puffed platinum hairdo, as though she feared it had collapsed like a surprised souffle.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“A guess, and not a very clever one, Liz. Someone visited Max that evening. You didn’t answer when Tony called you from the Paradise, which surprised him. No witness has come forward to the police, so far as I know, and, frankly, you’re one of the few players unaccounted for that evening. I had the feeling that Tony was suspicious when you weren’t home. As I say, a guess.”
She grinned. “A good one.”
“Tell me.”
“Nothing really to tell, though I don’t want anyone to know. I mean, like Max got killed right after that visit. So I can’t go to the police…”
I cut her off. “Of course, you can. You have to.”
She shook her head. “God, no. They’ll think I…”
“Tell me what you know. Liz.”
She sat back, folded her arms across her chest, glanced around the crowded room. She leaned in and seemed to be weighing her words, time for intimate confession. “I’m sick of it all, Miss Ferber. I’m sick of Tony. Of Ethan. Of Frank. All of them. I stayed too long at the fair, as they say.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve had it. You gotta know that I told Tony he had to get out of my place now that he’s lost that dumb job in the valley. Yeah, quite the job! A measly few dollars a week, lost on the ride back home. Drinks and poker. I mean, I sort of love the slob- I mean the old Tony who made me laugh, who bought me cheap trinkets on Sunset, who promised me the moon.” She sighed. “Before everything fell apart. The drinking. You know, I won’t allow that in my apartment. I don’t even wanna be around him then-like that night at Ava’s when we showed up there with Frank and Ava was having that cocktail party. I told them I didn’t wanna go. I know how those nights end, for God’s sake.”
“So he drinks at the Paradise.”
“Yeah, that sleazy gin mill.” She bit the corner of a nail. Red enamel flecked off. “You know, I started thinking about my life. My career. I was dumb enough to believe that Tony had some influence-with Frank and Ava. But they’re in their own pretty little worlds. Frank’s mean to me. Ava is sweet but only looking at Frank. Ethan thought I’d be good for Tony-he pushed the relationship on me, paid for everything. He planned it like a military operation. He didn’t know how to handle Tony-once Tony became this…you know, different guy. Get Tony out of his hair once and for all. But Ethan’s a jerk, too. ‘Are you going out looking like that?’ ‘Why would someone your size wear a dress like that?’ That’s how he talks to me. I know style, Miss Ferber. I got a chinchilla fall jacket with a velveteen collar. High style. Look at Ethan. Mr. Neat Freak…ooh ooh ooh, I got me a button loose. Help me! Ooh ooh, somebody scuffed my shoe.” She paused, out of breath.