Home > Starlet(8)

Starlet(8)
Author: Sophie Lark

I needed to learn which crew members had been present the morning Clara had been killed.

5. A Friend or Acquaintance

 

 

I had no particular suspects to add to this category yet, but I wanted to consider all options.

In truth, the only friend of Clara’s I had met was Lillie LaShay. She seemed too quiet and gentle to be a murderer. And Clara had nothing but the kindest things to say about her. She had loved working with Lillie, and seemed to like living with her, too.

Still, you never really knew what people were like, deep down inside. Isn’t that what neighbors always said, when the police interviewed them in the wake of some horrific crime? I can’t believe it . . . he seemed like such a nice, normal man . . .

Frowning and scribbling in my notebook, I added one last category:

6. A Lover

 

 

Also from reading the paper, I saw how many women met a violent end at the hands of their boyfriend, husband, or lover. Strangulation was an intimate and rageful way to murder someone. It fit the mode of a jilted or jealous lover.

As far as I knew, Clara hadn’t been dating anyone recently, but she had certainly had her share of paramours in the past.

Clara dated a wide variety of men, from other actors, to handsome waiters, to established older men. Some had been married, and most of the relationships had been tempestuous in one way or another. It was not out of the realm of possibility that some had been criminals, like Hedda Hopper had said. Clara loved to meet people of all kinds. She liked excitement. Even danger.

So this was perhaps the most likely scenario of all.

Since Clara hadn’t mentioned any of her recent boyfriends, I would have to figure out who they had been. That was the information I hoped to glean from Ms. Hopper.

I finished my lunch, tucking my little notebook back into my handbag. I paid the bill with coins from my purse, then walked the few blocks north from Sunset Boulevard to my sister’s apartment on Hillcrest Road.

Clara had changed houses several times in the eight years she lived in Los Angeles. As her fortunes improved, she had moved from a squalid shared flat into this pretty Spanish Colonial-style building on the hillside. The words Villa Bonita were written across the facade in cursive, and ivy sprawled thickly across the stucco.

I took the elevator up to the apartment on the third floor. I knocked, and Lillie LaShay opened the door immediately, as if she’d been standing there waiting.

Lillie didn’t appear any more at ease in her own home than she had outside the cathedral. She had changed out of the plain black dress she’d worn to the funeral. Now she wore a long cotton smock, which hung on her skinny frame under a knit cardigan.

“Thanks for letting me come by,” I said. “You have a lovely home.”

It was true—many of Clara’s past apartments had been ramshackle messes, a jumble of second-hand furniture with dirty clothes and empty glasses piled on every surface. This was a proper home.

I saw a reading nook next to the window, with a Moroccan rug under the chaise lounge, and a small end table with a fringed lamp. More chairs clustered around a low table that carried a silver tray, a martini shaker, and clean glasses. The shelves were full of all sorts of books, both paperback novels and leather-bound volumes. On the walls, framed lithographs and prints.

Lillie looked pleased by my compliment—all this was undoubtedly her handiwork.

“This was Clara’s room,” she said, opening the first door off the hallway.

I expected to find the sort of mess I was accustomed to seeing from my sister, but instead the room was tidy and bare. It had an oddly sterile feel. There were no pictures on the wall, and the bed was made with tight, smooth corners. Only a few dresses hung in the wardrobe. The objects on the nightstand were neatly stacked—Clara’s brush and mirror set, her music box, and her favorite book of poems by Emily Dickinson.

This struck me as odd because I knew, for instance, that Clara usually kept her music box in her underwear drawer. Had Lillie tidied the room because she knew I was coming?

“Here,” Lillie said. “You can use these cartons for Clara’s things.”

She indicated a stack of small cardboard cartons, the kind that grocers used for apples or bananas.

She left me alone so I could pack up Clara’s belongings. I slowly emptied the contents of the drawers into the boxes. Everything had been folded neatly away, something that Clara would never have bothered to do.

Something else strange: Clara’s drawers contained fancy nylon stockings and new jewelry I’d never seen before. They could have been gifts from her admirers, but they looked expensive, and untouched. This discovery of riches was compounded when I fished Clara’s bankbook out of her dresser drawer. The balance was almost $3000. I saw regular deposits over the last few months, most in the amount of $400.

Clara was making good money with her new contract at Paramount, but her expenses had always been high. I was surprised to see she had so much money saved. Plus, the deposits didn’t really accord with her weekly paychecks from Paramount.

I slipped the bankbook inside my purse. Once I found Clara’s leather notebook, I stowed it safely in the same place, intending to read through it once I was back at the hotel.

It didn’t take long for me to finish packing up the room. When I came back out, I found Lillie making tea in the kitchen.

“I’ll have this ready in just a moment if you’d like a cup,” Lillie said in her soft, low voice.

“I’ll just use the powder room, if that’s alright,” I said.

“It’s at the end of the hall.” Lillie pointed.

I didn’t actually need the toilet at all.

What I really wanted, rudely, was to sneak a look at Lillie’s room.

Lillie seemed both kind and sincere, and had been a friend of Clara’s for a long time, but I had already decided that every person I met would be a suspect.

Instead of going into the powder room, I took the door to the left. Lillie’s room was larger and more fully furnished than Clara’s. It had more of the lived-in elements one would expect—a dress flung over the back of a chair, a pair of shoes tossed in the corner, and a lap blanket hanging off the end of the bed.

A little silver bowl sat at the foot of the bed—the kind one might use to feed a dog or a cat. But there was no sign of a pet in the apartment.

And something else—as I examined the jumble of cosmetics atop the vanity, I spotted a lipstick that I was certain belonged to Clara. I opened it up. It was definitely Summer Memories, the color Clara always wore.

Emboldened, I quickly opened the top drawer of the dresser and looked through the underthings. Back in the corner, half-hidden, was a small perfume bottle I recognized. I had given it to Clara two Christmases ago: the scent Clara always wore, Je Reviens. I sniffed it to be certain.

Had Lillie stolen these things from Clara? Maybe Clara had loaned them to her, but I didn’t think so—particularly not the perfume, which Clara considered her signature scent. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to wear it.

Lillie and Clara had risen to fame together as a comedic duo. They started at the bottom, climbing the Hollywood ladder side by side. Then Clara, with her beauty and charm, floated up to a new level of stardom.

Was Lillie jealous? Had she taken Clara’s cosmetics out of spite?

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)
» The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash #4)