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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Hollywood loves a dead girl. She's always so photogenic. Salma Lowe understands better than anyone how Hollywood chews up and spits out starlets. She is the offspring of Hollywood royalty, a former child star turned guide on a true crime bus tour and sister to Tawney, dubbed the 'Hurricane Blonde', who was murdered in the mid-'90s. The case remains unsolved. Then she discovers another dead woman with an uncanny resemblance to Tawney on the very property where her sister was murdered. A killer has struck again and with the police investigation going nowhere, Salma plunges back into Los Angeles' seductive allure to find the culprit. But the search for the truth will take her deep into the rotten heart of Hollywood past and present, and into her family's dark secrets.
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3
THE HURRICANE BLONDE
HALLEY SUTTON
For Paul Vangelisti, who tells the best stories.
I took one and ran with it.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
The pretty blonde would be dead in three minutes. She stood in front of the Biltmore Los Angeles hotel, wind snapping her black linen dress against her waist, revealing shiny Spanx and spray-tanned thighs. Ringed around her, a dozen true-crime junkies baked under the September sun, leaking electrolytes but not enthusiasm. Not yet. For three more minutes, Beth Short – better known as the Black Dahlia, Los Angeles’s most infamous unsolved murder – was alive to tell her story.
‘I hitched a ride up from San Diego with a travelling salesman,’ the Black Dahlia said. ‘A “nice guy,” married. You know the type.’ Melany Grey, the actor embodying the Dahlia, pantomimed handsy, skimming her palms over her bodice. My murder tourists laughed, nudged each other. Yes, yes, we know.
Stars Six Feet Under wasn’t the only tour company in Hollywood that promised an insider’s look at the macabre underbelly of fame. But we had something that set us apart. We had my Dead Girls. For four hours every day of the week except Mondays and holidays – though you’d be surprised how many people preferred spending Christmas with murdered starlets over their own families – I could bring the dead back to life.
‘I told him I was meeting my sister. But he wouldn’t leave me alone. A gentleman.’ The Dahlia rolled her eyes. ‘I sat in that lobby trying not to play footsy with him for hours.’ She gestured to the Biltmore behind her.
I’d heard the story hundreds of times, but I couldn’t help myself. I turned on cue with my tourists and stared at the hotel, glittering in the white sun.
In 1947, when the Black Dahlia was murdered, the Biltmore was the largest, fanciest hotel west of Chicago. She was class, and money, and all the promise of Los Angeles – that mirage of fame and success and good fortune – rolled up into one.
Now, nearly a hundred years into her residency – ancient in this city, which preferred its buildings like its women: shiny, new, young – the Biltmore was starting to show her cracks. Sumptuous carpets a little threadbare. Gilded frescoes dingy and studded with grey gum patches old enough to vote.
In the end, she had brought the Black Dahlia fame.
‘By the time I got rid of him,’ the Dahlia said, blonde strands escaping her black wig, ‘it was night.’ Her voice fell to a hush, leaving us to imagine 9th January, 1947, when Beth Short wandered from the lobby of the Biltmore into the dark, dangerous cold of downtown Los Angeles and disappeared. A week later, her body, cracked open like an egg, would be discovered across town by a young mother and daughter out for a sunny morning stroll.
Melany paused, letting us sit in our imaginations, wondering. Then she shivered, fluttering her fingers over actual goosebumps raised on her bare arms.
I peered closer, impressed. Actual goosebumps – a good trick. All the girls I hired from my mother’s acting school for my tour came with the Vivienne Powell guarantee of excellence, of course. But goosebumps on command – even Vivienne’s magic didn’t usually extend that far.
‘Who knows what might have happened to me if he hadn’t been such a gentleman,’ Melany said. ‘Maybe I would’ve left while it was still daylight. Maybe I would’ve lived a long life. We’ll never know.’
I nibbled on the edge of my thumb, biting deep into cuticle and sucking on the pain. Like every tour, I wanted to stop her there. Keep Beth Short alive a few more minutes. But that wasn’t the way the story ended. You couldn’t cheat the past.
I knew that better than anyone.
Melany finished the monologue I’d written, sharing theories about the Dahlia’s fate: the sons and nephews who came out of the woodwork with stories about bad daddies who might’ve killed her. Thousands of suspects. Never solved. I didn’t think it could be any more, not really. The Black Dahlia meant something to Los Angeles, but only as a mystery. Even if they didn’t know it, people preferred it that way.
Melany stared at me, eyebrows raised.
Earth to Salma. I cleared my throat. ‘Any questions?’
In the back, a woman with sunburned shoulders and a puffy purple fanny pack raised her hand. I tried not to roll my eyes. I could guess her question. She’d want personal details about the Dahlia. She’d have her own theories about who she was, what happened to her, why it happened to her. I’d come to think of Beth Short as something of a litmus test: you tell me what you see when you look at the Dead Girl, and I’ll tell you what’s missing in your life.
‘Yes?’
‘Didn’t the brochure say we’d get a cocktail?’ A low rumble of laughter moved through my group. Emboldened, Purple Fanny Pack smirked. ‘I mean, this is the Salma Lowe tour, right? I’m surprised we don’t get drinks at every stop.’
The laughter was louder this time. I scrunched my face into an almost-smile. ‘Funny,’ I said. ‘I haven’t heard that one.’ I gestured at the hotel. ‘Upstairs, the bartender has crafted a real treat – a Black Dahlia cocktail, special for our tour. Be back here in twenty minutes, or the bus leaves without you.’
My tourists lined up for their drink tokens, jabs at my tabloid past long forgotten as they held up their palms for the promise of lobby air conditioning, the phantom taste of Chambord and Absolut citrus already on their tongues.
When I’d first started my tour, I’d made the mistake – oh, what a mistake – of believing my guests wanted to understand my own obsessions: the shadow side of the Hollywood spotlight, the darkness that beckoned for women who burnt too brightly. She had everything until she didn’t. The Marilyn Monroes, the Jayne Mansfields, the Thelma Todds and Jean Harlows and Dorothy Strattens – none of whom lived past thirty-six.
But after five years, I knew what my riders really wanted: photographic evidence of being interesting – dark, complicated, ever so slightly twisted. They’d gladly fork over seventy-five dollars to let tragedy crinkle the edges of their cookie-cutter, basic-bitch lives, sprinkling Dead Girls over their Instagram feed like a game of brunch, brunch, murder.
Melany hovered near my elbow as I handed out the final token. I let the doors slide shut – that air con did feel good – then said, ‘Goosebumps on command. Impressive.’
‘Really?’ Melany’s face lit up, pink as a shrimp. ‘You were impressed?’
I winced. Actors were like puppies, eager to soak up praise and attention. And like puppies, there was something appealing and dangerous about all that tell me I’m good and I’ll follow you anywhere trust. It could get a girl in trouble. ‘You made Vivienne proud.’
She bounced happily on her toes, dress swishing around her knees. I rummaged through my purse, looking for the check I owed her, along with a tip – goosebumps deserved a tip – when Melany said, the words all in a rush, nasal Texas twang creeping in, ‘Then would you put in a good word with her? There’s this part I’ll die if I don’t get – well, actually, I already didn’t get it, but maybe there’s another part, and if Vivienne freaking Powell tells him I’m a good actor, Cal will reconsider—’
‘Cal?’ My purse dropped onto the asphalt. A lip gloss and a tampon, identical shades of pink, bounced onto the street. ‘Cal Turner?’
Melany bent down, gathered the tubes for me. ‘His new super-secret project. The casting director won’t even release the full sides for auditions. It’s on an’ – her fingers made bunny quotes around my tampon and lip gloss – “asneeded basis”.’
Restricting sides – script excerpts actors used for auditions – was not the worst rumour I’d heard about Cal. The most dangerous director in Hollywood, one magazine had dubbed him – like it was a good thing. When I’d known him, he’d been a fledgling auteur with a leading man’s face and a bad temper. And my sister’s fiancé.
‘So? Will you?’ Melany’s face was eager, like a little girl promised a toy.
I’d always been a coward when it came to conflict.
I dug through my purse again, stalling as I fished out a floppy worm of orange sugar-free gum, thinking of Cal’s face as I chomped it. ‘Sure,’ I lied. Even if acting wasn’t high on the list of things my mother and I no longer talked about, I wouldn’t have done it. Not for Cal’s film. ‘I’ll put a bug in her ear.’
Melany gripped my arm. I couldn’t look at her. ‘Oh my God, I can’t thank you enough. Salma, you’re a lifesaver.’ When I looked up, Melany’s head was tilted as she watched me, her cornflower-blue eyes wide. ‘Don’t you ever miss acting?’
The gum fell to the back of my throat. I coughed. ‘Miss it?’
‘I used to watch Morty’s House as a kid, you know. You were good. You were funny.’ She hesitated for a moment, then said, almost shyly: ‘Iron Prayer is my favourite film.’
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me my parents’ film Iron Prayer was their favourite movie – well, in a way, my family did have a dollar, more than a dollar, for every time I’d heard it.
But Morty’s House wasn’t anyone’s favourite show, except maybe mine. Playing plucky Polly Parker hadn’t required much acting talent besides mastering a salty sprinkle of one-liners, like: Gosh, Mr Morty, don’t you know what to say to make a girl feel special! with an eye roll so big, I had to ice my forehead between takes. Morty’s House left me with a permanent bald spot behind my right ear from years of a pulled-too-tight-ponytail, meagre residual checks from our brief flirtation with syndication in the early aughts, and a taste for amphetamines in the form of producer-mandated diet pills.
It had also been the only time in my childhood when I’d had friends, real sleepover-truth-or-dare-MASH-until-morning friends.
Melany wasn’t done. ‘You can’t tell me Vivienne Powell and Dave Lowe’s daughter doesn’t have acting in her blood.’ Melany must have seen my face, because she clicked her tongue, shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. That was thoughtless.’
Even though it had been almost two years since my father died, every mention of him was like a tiny punch still, another reminder he was gone for good. I still expected him to pick up the phone when I called. It was a shock to remember – like I’d carelessly misplaced him somewhere. But it was death that had been careless with me.
How you stop acting: never live up to your family’s expectations. Delight the tabloids with a never-ending stream of bad angles and bad choices, the merry-go-rounds of rehab to red carpet and back again, the box office bombs and black sheep antics that sell more glossy covers than good news can. You won’t believe what Sloppy Salma did now! You stop acting when you sell more magazines than movie tickets.
And in the end, when you needed it most, fame meant nothing. It couldn’t protect you from the things that go bump in the night. It couldn’t protect you at all.
Melany just didn’t know it yet.
‘I’ll put in that word,’ I said. Behind us, a few of my tourists staggered down the lobby stairs, cherry-cheeked and loose. ‘Thanks again, Melany.’
I turned on my heel, blinking into the smoggy sunlight as I crossed the street to my bus. I folded my arms against the steering wheel, ignoring the leather scalding me through my sleeves. Melany gave the hotel one last look, then slid the wig from her head, shaking out her long blonde hair underneath it.
She didn’t need my good word anyway. She was Cal Turner’s type exactly.
I closed my eyes as the tourists mounted the steps. I didn’t want to watch them swaying into their seats like big drunk babies, yelping and giggling as they leant against scorching windows, making a show of fanning themselves with a Stars Six Feet Under brochure. Ready to devour one more Dead Girl before the ride home.
I was always jumpy at this part of my tour.
As the bus rocked, I practised my final monologue of the day. Tawney Lowe – an actor you might also know as the Hurricane Blonde – died twenty years ago, in the hours between 10:30 a.m. and 1:17 p.m. on 16th June, 1997. But no, that was pulling a punch. Tawney Lowe was murdered in the hours between …
Murder. The word stuck in my throat like a clot of phlegm.
I counted backward from ten before I tried again. It was an old trick from the Betty Ford Centre for Clean Living and No More Fun, where I’d served two tours: a longer stint from 2001 to 2002, as a teenager, and a shorter stay in 2004, a refresher course on the appeal of court-mandated sobriety.
Twenty years ago, my sister, Tawney Lowe – also known as the Hurricane Blonde – was strangled to death. Her murder has never been solved.
I’d said it before. What was one more time?
I opened my eyes. ‘Okay, everyone,’ I said, glancing at my sun-mottled crew in the rear-view as I nosed the bus back onto the glitter and rush of Los Angeles streets, backward in time to 1:17 p.m. on 16th June, 1997, when my mother and I discovered Tawney’s lifeless body steps from her pool. ‘One last stop and then you’re home free.’
CHAPTER TWO
In Hollywood, there are blondes and there are blondes. There are the breathless baby-voiced Gee whiz, mister Marilyn blondes, held up high like empty trophies. There are the platinum-hued Harlow blondes – striking and remote, never natural. There’s the Blonde Next Door, who everyone loves as a child when she’s friends with an alien, or the little kid sister. But then she grows up, a trick no one asked for. There are sunny, friendly blondes everyone likes to see happy but loves to see dumped, those poor little never could keep a man blondes whose heartbreak always makes the front page. There are Hitchcock’s icy blonde sufferers, the curves-everywhere blonde spilling out of her bra, the butt-of-the-joke blondes, the power blondes begging to be taken down a notch, the blondes who go out like a light, not a survivor’s bone in their bodies, the blondes who make the prettiest corpses.
None of them held a candle to the Hurricane Blonde.
‘All right, everyone,’ I said, my voice froggy as I jammed the bus into park, releasing the hydraulics with a friendly sigh. ‘Last stop.’
As my riders descended the stairs – still giggly and tipsy – I checked my lipstick in the rear-view mirror, thumbing away little clumps of red as I avoided eye contact with our destination: the three-story Spanish Colonial down the street.
The June my sister died, the trees lining her street flowered in one last splendour before summer set in. Twenty years later, the jacaranda still stood guard over Tawney’s Olympic-size swimming pool, drooping with the purple blossoms. All these years later, and it still looked as it had when she lived there. It made it possible to believe Tawney might still pull up in her white Porsche, cranky and snappish after a fourteen-hour shoot. The Jacaranda House was waiting for her to come home.
That made two of us.
The bus swayed as my final rider made his way down the stairs, grunting as he half-hopped to the pavement below. I took one last glance at myself in the mirror, fingers tracing the slight lines around my mouth. Tawney died before ageing had become a concern; no sisterly words of advice for the best tricks to keep time at bay, Pond’s cream, Salmon, I swear by it. Trust me.
‘Showtime,’ I whispered, yanking my keys from the ignition, trying to put a bounce in my step I didn’t really feel as I descended from the bus.
My group formed a semicircle on the sidewalk in front of the Jacaranda House, and two of the younger riders turned to snap selfies in front of it, pink tongues extended. Everyone avoided the faint fuchsia stain on the pavement, a leftover from the early years when fan-brought bouquets rotted in the sun until they were etched on the asphalt.
‘Here we are. Our final stop.’ I paused, glanced around. A few tourists watched me with varying degrees of discretion. One, a white man in his forties wearing a baseball cap, who had come by himself – fucking creepy – stared at me with naked curiosity.
I’d learnt long ago that part of my tour’s appeal was an experience with Salma Lowe: daughter of Hollywood royalty, former wild-child starlet, tabloid fixture turned upclose confidante of murder. They didn’t want the truth. They wanted their money’s worth.
They wanted a show.
I cleared my throat. ‘On 16th June, 1997, Tawney Lowe, also known as the Hurricane Blonde, was murmurd’ – I coughed twice, spit it out – ‘strangled to death by persons unknown. No one has ever been charged with her death. At 1:16 p.m., after lunch with our mother, I rang her doorbell – there—’ I craned my head over the top of my riders, gesturing at the front door. Every head turned with my finger, as though tugged.
The top of Tawney’s Juliet balcony above the front door was visible over the privacy hedges my sister planted after a paparazzo made five figures off a shot of her sunning topless. I could picture her stepping onto it, frowning down at me in her favourite mismatched bikini, mouthing, as she had a million times: Door’s unlocked.
For a moment, the feeling was so real that my throat closed, the wind knocked out of me.
I ran through the rest of her life on autopilot, impersonal as a Wikipedia entry: growing up famous, the daughter of Dave Lowe and Vivienne Powell Lowe. (Oh, Iron Prayer is your favourite film? I haven’t heard that one before!) Tawney’s star rising in Hollywood. The handful of films she’d left behind, which I’d watched often enough I could quote her every line. On the set of one of those films, Love’s Long Midnight, she’d fallen in love with then up-and-coming director Cal Turner. A few months after the film came out – bombed, rather – Tawney called off their engagement, infamously leaving only a note: I can’t love you when I don’t even know who I am.
Three months later, she was dead.
The details I didn’t share: the strangulation lasted probably less than five minutes. No neighbours heard her scream or cry for help, or noticed anything out of the ordinary. That because she’d been lying out in the sun when I found her, it had initially made determining a time of death difficult.
As I talked, I noticed the two selfie queens nudging each other, pointing behind me. I turned my head, but before I could see, Baseball Cap asked a question.
‘Who do you think killed her?’
I took a deep breath. An old warning: Salma, this fixation of yours is not healthy. It’s not helping you heal. ‘No one was ever arrested. The investigation is still ongoing,’ I said carefully.
There was a smugness to his expression, like he knew what I was thinking. He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, tilted his head. ‘You must have a theory.’
I gritted my teeth. ‘I really can’t say.’
No one can stand an open-ended mystery. Theories were everywhere. There’d been the serial killer in the early aughts with a yen for busty blondes who turned out to have been incarcerated during Tawney’s murder. There was the anonymous tip that my sister’s death was a mob hit, that Tawney had seen something she shouldn’t have. And it was true, she’d been antsy the last few weeks before her death, distant and moody. But the tip hadn’t given any leads to chase, only vague mentions of something bad-bad at a nightclub, no details.
Then there were the fake confessions, the crank calls – I chopped your sister into little bitty pieces; Charlie Manson did it, people think he can’t hurt anyone, but I’m telling you; Jesus punishes whores with fake tits. The more terrible the details, the less plausible the tips. It didn’t matter. Each one turned me inside out.
There were a thousand open-ended possibilities.
But Baseball Cap was right; I’d had my own suspicion, once. But I knew better than to dwell on that. ‘Any other questions?’
One of the selfie girls raised her hand, then without waiting, called out in a strangled voice: ‘Is that another actress in the pool?’
Actor, I wanted to correct her, not actress. I held back. ‘For this stop, we don’t—’
She jabbed her finger behind me. ‘Right there. Right there.’
I turned. In the sunlight, Tawney’s pool shimmered blue and white. White? A towel, I thought, blown into the water. That was all. I was about to say as much when it moved again. Something waving. Something underneath the surface.
Not something. A hand.
‘Oh fuck,’ I said.
Baseball Cap stepped forward – man in charge here – but I ducked under his arm, already streaking past him.
My heels sank into the ground, and I stumbled, didn’t stop. If anyone was going to investigate, it would be me.
I had my hand on the iron gate, punching in Tawney’s twenty-year-old code without thinking – 07/21, the date of my sister’s cancelled wedding to Cal – shoving at the handle as it buzzed. Dread spread from my stomach to my toes as I pushed it open.
There was a body at the bottom of the pool.
I closed my eyes, squeezing so hard I saw neon splotches. It had happened to me before. Minutes slipped out of my clock, rearranged themselves to an internal logic that didn’t have any use for time. I’d catch sight of a long blonde ponytail, or a mole on the back of the neck like Tawney’s, and I was fifteen again. It passed. It would pass when I opened my eyes.
There was a body at the bottom of the pool.
She was suspended in the water, twisting gently like a ballerina in a music box. Hot pink bikini straps, skin bluish in the chlorine. Reaching, reaching for the surface.
Oh God oh God oh God oh my God oh God oh God.
I kicked my shoes off, and then I was half-falling, half-jumping in, icy rush filling my nose, my throat. I opened my eyes and shoved myself down, four, six feet, until I could grab her hand, crinkled and cold.
Even as I kicked hard for the surface, I knew. The dead feel different, even in a pool, even warmed by sunshine. Your fingers know the truth before your heart does.
I was screaming for help before I surfaced, gagging on mouthfuls of chlorine. The man in the baseball cap grabbed underneath her arms, grunting as he hauled her dead weight backward. I flopped myself onto the pavement like a fish, gasping for air, too stunned to cry.
When he flipped the body over, I could see mascara smudged in a little half-moon under her closed lashes. Early twenties, maybe younger. Dark blonde hair made darker by the water, which had also turned her swimsuit dark pink.
‘Call 911,’ I told Baseball Cap, who gaped down at her. When he didn’t respond, I clapped my hands in his face. ‘Hey! Call 911!’
Then I was starting CPR, not sure if I remembered it right, pounding on her chest and blowing hard into her mouth. Over and over, I repeated a promise that wasn’t mine to keep: ‘You’re going to be okay, you’re going to be okay, you’ll be okay.’
I kept it up until I felt faint, way past the time I knew it was useless. Then I remembered – for drowning victims, weren’t you supposed to turn them on their side, to help expel the water in their lungs? Wasn’t that what I’d seen in the movies? Stupid, Salma, stupid, you’ve wasted time, maybe you killed her, maybe this is your fault. My fingers trembled as I rolled her, thumping her gently at first, then harder, willing her to cough, sit up, thank me, breathe again, live again. Jeez, that was a close call!
Finally, my arms burning, I gave up. The dead girl slipped down my thighs, eyes open wide. I reached down and brushed a lock of the dark blonde hair from her forehead. I was thinking, who were you? and how did you get here?
But mostly, I was thinking, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.
Behind me, I heard a click. Ten feet away, Baseball Cap, his call to 911 completed, snapped photos of me on his phone, the dead girl splayed over my knees. I blinked again, time collapsing, the flash of the shutter like the blinding pop-pop-pop – Salma, Salma! Look over here! – of the red carpet from years past.
Thirty-four years of training kicked in, and I couldn’t help myself: I smiled pretty for the camera.
16TH JUNE, 1997
‘No more arguing,’ my mother said, hands flexing on the steering wheel like she was choking it. She glared at me in the passenger seat, her lips a prim line of La Vivienne by Dior. ‘Go.’
I glared at her, fifteen and moody. It wasn’t my day Tawney had ruined by bailing on lunch. But Vivienne was in full movie star mode, and I knew she wouldn’t crack. We wouldn’t go anywhere until I complied.
‘Fine,’ I muttered, slamming the door so hard behind me it rocked the car.
In the five minutes we’d spent arguing over who should knock on Tawney’s door – me pointing out, rather reasonably, that since they were fighting, she should go – my sister was dead or dying less than a hundred yards away.
I tromped up the steps. If the adults couldn’t behave like adults, why did I have to? How freaking unfair was that?
But at her gate, I hesitated.
In a bad mood, Tawney’s acid sarcasm crossed the line quick-quick into casual cruelty. She’d apologise later – sometimes much later – hugs, kisses, Dinner’s on me, Salmon. But she’d been especially snappish since she called off the engagement. The week before, she and my mother had fought worse than usual, a real lung buster. The lunch had been a white flag attempt. But after an hour and a half of waiting for Tawney to arrive, my mother paid for our twenty-five-dollar salads in silence, then drove us straight to the Jacaranda House.
I looked back. At the curb, Vivienne fluttered her hands at me. Go inside, go.
I punched in the gate code: 07/21. She hadn’t changed it. Maybe she still wasn’t sure about the breakup. I felt my heart lift a little. Maybe Cal wasn’t really gone for good. Maybe she’d give him another chance.
No answer to my knock. I turned to my mother, shrugged. I could see her bent over the wheel, sunglasses blotting out her eyes. I knocked again, called Tawney’s name. When she still didn’t answer, I pushed the door open – my sister left her front door unlocked, Tawney, how could you be so stupid – and in the sunny glare, the Jacaranda House stretched dark and unending before me.
The next part comes in blips and snatches.
Whir-chop of her ceiling fan. Snowy leather sofa in the centre of her living room, a blanket kicked to one side. Curving marble staircase up, up, up. Open French doors out to the pool, Tawney’s happy place. Greasy shimmer of my sister’s tan legs behind the glass.
Of course she stood us up to catch rays, I thought, sliding through the doors, glaring at her polished-pink toes. Bitch.
Tawney was half in the shade of her yellow-and-white sun umbrella, her legs long and brown in the sun. The coconut smell of her tanning oil. Then I saw all of her.
Tawney still looked like herself, not yet completely a corpse, despite the unnatural angle of her limbs, the purple tinge at her lips. Eggplant bruises already settling in around her neck. Sun bounced off the pool, throwing shards of light over my sister’s eyes, open and staring straight up at the sky.
It didn’t make sense.
At her hip, a still-damp, crumpled towel. She would’ve used it to rub her long blonde mane dry after she swam thirty laps, her morning ritual. Weeks later, we’d discover it was the murder weapon, the terry cloth scratching her throat as she struggled. I stepped closer, my shoe slipping on the puddle of overturned suntan oil slicking her legs, and leant over her.
In my memory – a kid’s memory, it couldn’t be right – Tawney’s marble eyes looked through me, but her lips crooked up in a tiny smile and I thought: she’s asleep. When I touch her, she’ll wake up. This is a scene study, that’s all. I reached out, threaded my hand into her hair, and then I heard my mother behind me, screaming.
That’s when I knew.
CHAPTER THREE
Detective Mykella Watkins wasn’t like other cops I’d met. For one thing, she was a woman. I watched her take statements from my tourists, silver earrings tinkling as she scribbled in her notebook. She made a point of shaking hands, thanking them for their time, before moving on to the next. In her tan suit, her polite professionalism, she was a world away from the crew-cut-and-aviator-sunglasses cops who interviewed me when Tawney died.
I kept my back pressed against the scorching metal of my bus while I waited to give a statement. If I didn’t have to look at the Jacaranda House, I wouldn’t have to imagine what was unfolding behind the yellow caution tape ribboning Tawney’s front yard.
Had the dead girl lived there? On my tours, I’d sometimes catch a flicker in the window, the warm feeling of being watched. But no one had ever come out to say hello. That was fine with me. I could pretend it was still Tawney’s home.
While we waited for the cops, I called Dale, who owned Stars Six Feet Under. He kept asking me to repeat what had happened – Just one more time, Salma, run me through it one more time – until I finally snapped.
‘Get here and see for yourself,’ I said, hanging up.
Across the street, Watkins flipped her notebook shut, making eye contact with me before she sauntered over. I straightened my shoulders, pushed myself away from the van. Here we go again. As she introduced herself, explained the questions she’d be asking, I realised she thought I’d never seen a dead body before. I didn’t correct her.
No recognition on her face when I gave my name.
I walked her through the events of the afternoon. Watkins nodded as she scribbled, dark head bent so I was looking down at the white zigzag of her part.
Had I noticed anything unusual? Had I seen anyone on the property before I found her?
They were the same questions detectives had asked twenty years ago. Tell us again, miss, where you found the body. Did you touch it? You can tell us if you touched it. My sister’s body, her famously coveted, photographed, gossiped-about body, an it already.
I still didn’t have any good answers.
The sun was starting to go down, and I crossed my arms over my chest, shivering in my damp clothes. Watkins finished jotting a thought in her notebook, then looked up at the Jacaranda House.
I stared with her, looking at Tawney’s glimmering blue pool. It had been my job to fish out the leaves and jacaranda blooms from the pool with a large net – Tawney’s toll for keeping my secrets, my mother’s Belvedere vodka bottles that started to go watery, the after-the-fact late-night alibis.
‘The Hurricane Blonde murder,’ Watkins mused. ‘My first few years on the force, I got called out here once or twice to shoo away looky-loos.’ Then she peered at me. ‘Lowe. Relation?’
I licked my lips. Bringing my sister into it would change things, I knew. There was no way around it. ‘My sister.’
Watkins made a sympathetic face, didn’t say anything. I hated that look. She knew things about me now, private things.
Behind her, EMTs bumped a black bag on a stretcher down from the curb to the street. We both stared at it, each of us with our separate, silent thoughts.
‘Anything else you think might help? Any guesses as to what happened here?’
My sister’s death all over again, I thought. But no, of course the two weren’t connected, except by location.
I had a flash of Cal’s handsome face, his arm snug around Tawney’s waist. The golden couple.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No idea.’
Watkins’s waist crackled, her walkie-talkie lighting up. She frowned, tilting her head to listen, then sighed. ‘Salma, will you excuse me for one second? Don’t leave, please.’
Saved. I nibbled my thumb, watching Watkins duck behind the yellow caution tape. I closed my eyes, rubbing slow circles over my heart. But with my eyes closed, all I could see was that poor girl six feet deep in Tawney’s pool, the blue twist of her lips. My eyes snapped open, roaming over the Jacaranda House. The sun passed behind a cloud, and the white house took on a grey, dingy look. Suddenly, it was no longer the friendly refuge of my childhood, and I shivered.
Down the street, a car door slammed, and I jumped, then shook my head. I needed to think about something, anything else, or I would unravel. I’d unzip my own skin and climb out and never find my way back.
From the car – a van – a woman with too-bouncy hair emerged, adjusting a lavaliere at her cleavage, followed by a man with a handheld camera. I squinted, reading the print on their van: KXLA CHANNEL 7.
Shit. Double shit. Salma Lowe finding another body would be a story. I hoped Watkins would hurry. I angled myself more closely to my bus, keeping my head down.
I almost screeched when someone tapped my arm.
‘Excuse me?’
I turned. Not the reporter. Instead, a white woman with dreamy, wide-set eyes and silver-blonde hair – a little younger than my mother – had her hand on my sleeve. She’d crept up on me.
‘You almost gave me a heart attack,’ I said.
I studied her. She wore a baggy linen sweater, an eco-friendly shopping tote on her arm. She didn’t look like a reporter, but you could never be sure. Maybe there was a tape recorder hidden in that bag. It wouldn’t be the first time.
‘What’s happened?’ Her eyes darted to the Jacaranda House. EMTs had angled the ambulance to block any potential gawkers from view, but the tape was a giveaway.
I knew that look. A rubbernecker look. A nosy neighbour look. Not a reporter’s look. I tamped down a flare of irritation: every day was the worst day of someone’s life. Those details belonged to this girl’s family, not a stranger.
‘I’m not sure.’ I pointedly pulled out my phone and scrolled, hoping she’d get the memo. I could feel the presence of the reporter pulsing like a sonar at my back. Where the hell was Watkins? I’d exhausted Instagram and Twitter before it became clear the woman wasn’t leaving. I snuck a glance underneath my lashes.
She stared at the caution tape with patient focus. A blue vein pulsed at her temple. There was a dry patch of skin on her cheek, a faint collection of freckles dotting her nose. Her scrubbed-raw prettiness was at odds with the uncanny symmetry of so many Angelenos, who paid to have their faces cut and tucked and pinched and folded, always ready for the prime time.
I couldn’t stop looking at her. I wasn’t sure why.
She turned and caught my gaze, like she expected me to stare. Like she was used to it. My cheeks flared with embarrassment.
‘I think it was a medical emergency,’ I said, gentler this time. I wasn’t exactly lying.
I’d expected my words to put an end to her curiosity, that she’d drift back to whichever McMansion she called home and stalk the evening news for an update like a normal person. Instead, she drew in three quick gasps, a prelude to hyperventilation, and clutched my arm. The colour drained from her face, and I had a terrible thought: is she this poor girl’s mother?
‘Somebody was hurt at the Jacaranda House?’
I blinked twice, my chest buzzing. I stared down at her whitening knuckles, clutching my arm. The Jacaranda House. That had been our private name for it, Tawney and me, our little nickname.
‘How did you—’
‘Salma? Salma Lowe, is that you?’
Both of us stopped in our strange ballet, her hands wrapped around my forearm, me trying to pry her off. Down the street, the reporter shaded her eyes, squinting. I saw her give one sharp wave to the cameraman, and then her heels were click-clicking on the pavement as she jogged over.
‘Fuck,’ I said under my breath. ‘Lady, let go of me.’
Instead, her fingernails dug into my skin. Her eyes narrowed, her mouth a moue of horror. ‘You’re Salma? You’re Tawney’s sister?’
‘What the fuck?’ I tugged on my arm, feeling a frisson of fear. There was a dead girl not a hundred feet away. An accident, maybe.
Maybe not.
The reporter was almost to us. ‘Salma! Salma, my name is Samiyah Jones, I’m a reporter for KXLA, I’d love to speak with you—’
I liked reporters even less than cops. I shoved the woman so hard she stumbled. Across the lawn, Watkins ducked under the caution tape, headed for me. I knew I should wait. I knew I should finish giving my statement.
But the blinding glare of the camera, its red light swaying back and forth as Samiyah and her cameraman panted for my statement, my tears, my trauma – I couldn’t take it. Once again, time collapsed on itself, a barrage of bad headlines ticker-taping across my eyes.
Slow down, youngster! Dave Lowe’s teenage daughter spotted dancing on table at nightclub.
Sloppy Salma: sources tell us child star is a ‘raging alcoholic’ who likes coca-not-cola.
Here she goes again: Salma Lowe enters rehab for the second time, cites ‘exhaustion.’
Fuck that.
Watkins had my name. She had more than my name; she knew who I was.
I’d get an earful from Dale. I didn’t care. I grabbed the bus keys and launched myself into the driver’s seat, slamming the door. Not a moment too soon; I could hear the reporter pounding on my window. Five minutes of your time! I ignored her and I burnt rubber, headed for the anonymity of the freeway.
But at the end of the street, I checked the rear-view. The silver-blonde stood in the road, staring. You’re Salma? You’re Tawney’s sister? I could feel her eyes on me as I pulled away, even as I turned the corner down the street and left it all behind like a bad dream.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Stars Six Feet Under bus picked up a few appreciative honks and stares as I glided in and out of traffic, foot heavy on the accelerator. Northbound on the 405, I thought: they’re telling her family now. When I made the exit for Hancock Park, I pictured her arriving at the morgue, bagged and tagged, where she’d be swabbed for evidence, soaked in fluids and powders, her body a clue to be solved.
I hadn’t realised where I was driving until I exited the freeway, slowing to a crawl in the evening traffic. At a red light, I rested my forehead on the steering wheel, closing my eyes. I took two deep breaths in through my nose and counted the beats of the exhale.
Breathe, Salma. My mother had repeated that as she drove us home from the Jacaranda House, following the ambulance that had taken its time pulling away. By then, we all knew there was no reason to hurry. I kept my eyes screwed closed as my mother took the curves of Mulholland slow, her hand on my knee like without an anchor I might vanish, too.
Behind me, a friendly Angeleno laid on the horn, letting me know the light had changed, and I gasped, eyes jerking open as I slammed my foot onto the gas, jumping forward.
I was transposing one trauma onto another. Two dead women in the same place, years apart – my brain was rewriting one scene with the other, because that’s what brains did, found connections, even in the grimmest of circumstances.
I parked the van alongside a lovingly tended lawn in Hancock Park. In the time since I’d found the poor girl’s body – whoever she was – in Tawney’s pool, the sun had started to go down and twilight was turning the neighbourhoods’ well-tended grass a sleepy shade of blackened green. The houses along the street – mansions, all – settled into a private evening glow. It was a zip code that looked too expensive for death, but I knew better. Every place has its secrets.
I picked my way across the wide limestone slabs of my godfather’s driveway, leading up to his pearly two-story French Mediterranean villa. Bougainvillea bushes and gnarled cypresses protected it from view, while also announcing: Someone famous lives here. Jack Parlato, once known as ‘the Production King’ for his string of hits, valued his privacy – but not at the expense of his glory.
I was grateful for the hedges now. I didn’t need any suspicious neighbours calling the cops about a drenched woman trying to break into Parlato’s palace. The front windows glowed; Jack was home. I kicked my shoes off – my kitten heels rubbed against my still-damp feet, threatening blisters – and hurried up the drive.
At the front door – ten feet tall, a doorbell that would play the drumroll jingle for Twentieth Century Fox, if I tapped it – I knelt to run my fingers across the bricks of Jack’s front stoop, searching for the false one to pry up the spare key. My fingers scraped against the grout, stinging, then a corner of a brick wiggled enough for me to lift it an inch or two, slide the key out.
I stood up, dusting my knees off. I slid the key into the lock, holding my breath as I tumbled it slowly, then pushed the door open.
Jack’s foyer was dark. On a console, I could see a photograph of my father and Jack from April 1974, arms around each other as they held up twin Academy Award statuettes for Iron Prayer, beaming at their golden good fortune. My mother hadn’t been there that night – Tawney was born weeks later – the only leg of the trio without a matching trophy. My eyes lingered on my father. The whole world in front of him. I pressed a kiss to a fingertip and smudged it against the glass over his face.
I closed my eyes, swaying lightly. I smelt lemon and garlic, the faint trace of a rich floral, Miles Davis streaming from the living room. Nothing bad could happen here, in Jack’s house. As a child, it had been a second home to me. Tawney and I even had our own individual guest bedrooms. I’d stayed with Jack when my parents were away on shoots, or enjoying movie premieres and long drives up the coast to Santa Barbara to bring us back grapey, slurry kisses. Those had been the fun times. It had also been home to me in darker times: the two of them on another trip to Tahiti or the Maldives to try again. To start fresh. There’d been a lot of that, over the years.
Soon, I’d call Jack’s name, tell him everything. But not yet. I wanted one more moment of feeling warm and safe and far from the Jacaranda House first.
From the living room I heard a husky feminine laugh, then the rise and fall of Jack’s voice.
My eyes snapped open. I knew that laugh.
I crept to the edge of the foyer, my damp sweater and jeans leaving a trail of droplets behind me. I’d peeled my top off in the car, dried it over the air conditioner as I drove. It hadn’t helped much; now I was cold and wet.
I peeked around the corner. My mother sat on Jack’s carpet, a nearly empty glass of wine in hand. In front of her, a sprawl of photographs. She leant toward Jack, who sat on the couch, hands clasped between knees, then held up another photograph for inspection. This time they both laughed.
What a cosy family scene. Missing only one member.
Jack stood up, collecting my mother’s wine glass. He’d have to pass through the foyer to get to the kitchen, I realised, and I backed up – slowly at first, then more quickly, trying to make it to the door before he saw me.
I wasn’t ready to see my mother.
My hand was practically on the doorknob when Jack rounded the corner and saw me, stopping short.
‘Salma?’
Jack wore an apron stamped with winking green olives over a crisply pleated yellow-and-orange silk shirt. He had an empty glass in each hand, a gentle ring of red wine in the bottom. He was in his mid-seventies, though he could pass for younger: perpetually too tan, a shock of bright white hair, and eyes such a light blue they were practically transparent. I felt an ache, as always, seeing him without my father at his side, bourbon rocks glasses in their hands. A matched set. ‘I used the spare key,’ I said. I considered bolting, telling him I’d explain later, then thought better of it. ‘What are you wearing?’
‘A present,’ Jack said automatically. Jack’s head was tilted, and I realised he was scanning me: the damp clothes, the stringy hair, bare feet. When he saw me notice, he forced his face into a neutral expression. ‘From your mother. Salma, are you all right? What are you doing here?’
A hiccupping sob trapped itself in my throat. Jack took a step toward me, alarmed, and I opened my mouth to tell him everything when I heard my mother call from the living room, ‘Jack? Is someone there?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll go.’
Jack shook his head. I knew he realised I hadn’t answered his question. ‘It’s Salma,’ he called to my mother, turning back to the living room. I knew he meant for me to follow.
I hesitated, giving the door one last longing stare, before I padded after him down the hallway. I’d never known how to say no to Jack, not since I was a kid faking a sore throat to watch cartoons on his couch while he made soup from scratch and answered my parents’ calls from Tahiti with soft assurances that I’d be all right. Don’t worry, she’s in good hands. And then he’d hang up the phone, wink at me, and ask what time the patient required ice cream for her sore, sore throat.
Jack rounded the corner and said brightly, making a show of the good news, ‘Look who I found!’
My mother’s long legs were drawn up underneath her as she sorted through the contents of a half dozen boxes of photographs in front of her. When she saw me, her eyebrows lifted, and I was a kid again, straining to remember my lines. Again, Salma. Give it real feeling this time.
It passed. My mother stood, looping an arm around my shoulders in a soft hug. I breathed in her perfume – tuberose and neroli, the scent I’d caught in Jack’s foyer. Jack excused himself to the kitchen, holding up the wineglasses, and then it was just the two of us, sizing each other up. ‘What a surprise, darling.’
She stroked my hair once – her creamy white hand not waterlogged or puckered with death – and I tried to laugh but it came out strangled. ‘A good one, I hope?’
Vivienne’s eyebrows drew together. From my mother, I had inherited thick black hair, a nose most generously described as patrician, and a wide mouth that took well to lipstick. It was easy to divide our family up: Tawney and my father with their golden hair, easy smiles, easy charisma. Then my mother and me, pale and dark and handsome, not pretty.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, voice film-noir smoky, silver-streaked hair pulled away from her face. She plucked at my top. ‘Why is this wet?’
‘Sprinkler malfunction at work,’ I lied. I nodded at the photographs, eager to change the subject. ‘What’s all this?’
Vivienne’s face fell at my mention of work – Darling, isn’t a bus tour a bit … déclassé? – but she lit up looking at the photographs. ‘The American Film Institute is hosting a retrospective for your father in a few weeks. They’ve asked me to speak. Jack and I were going through old photos to donate.’
Ah. And they hadn’t thought to include me, his only living daughter. My mother smiled at me, oblivious. I stuffed down the hurt, the anger. It was my fault, really, for all the grief I’d caused her over the years. Salma the addict couldn’t be trusted. The trustworthy daughter was dead. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I should go freshen up.’
I hurried to the bathroom, locking myself inside. I stared at myself in the mirror: round, doughy face. My mascara had bloomed into an uneven smoky eye, my bangs drying in spiky black clumps. Next to the sink basin, an amber bottle caught my eye – perfume. I sniffed delicately at my damp sweater, made a face – an unholy mix of dried sweat and panic and chlorine – then sniffed the perfume bottle.
Tuberose. Neroli. Jack kept a bottle of my mother’s perfume in his guest bathroom. I set it gently back on the counter, massaging my forehead. I’d call my mother and Jack later to apologise for the intrusion. But I needed to leave. Now. Whatever comfort I’d thought I’d find here, I’d misjudged.
When I swung the door open, eager to escape, my mother was standing in front of me, holding a box. I flinched, and she caught it, her smile wilting. She thrust the box at me, and I could see it was packed to the brim with old photos. A cardboard peace offering.
‘You don’t have to do that.’
Vivienne shrugged, played it lightly. ‘Jack has fifteen boxes in there. I need help.’ Her eyes roamed my face. ‘My beautiful girl,’ she murmured.
I blushed and shook my head, wise to her tricks but letting them work anyway. For a moment, her approval washed over me, and I forgot I’d held another dead woman in my arms not hours before. Then her eyes landed on my damp sweater, and her expression shifted, just slightly. ‘You know, darling,’ she said, choosing her words with such pointed delicacy my spine stiffened, ‘if you were having your … issues again, you could talk to me. I hope you know that.’
Once an addict, always an addict. Even to the people who loved me best. Maybe especially to them.
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ I said curtly, stepping past her to the front door, slamming it behind me.
CHAPTER FIVE
Iwedged the tour bus into my parking spot, jamming it into park and sliding out with the box under my arm. In the not-too-distant dusk, I could hear the whoops and screeches of children playing, the horns of ranchera music. No sirens. No rush.
Whatever had happened in mid-city today, it hadn’t reached my home in Glassell Park. I hadn’t brought it with me.
My bungalow was one of five nearly identical buildings set on one concrete foundation: clean white stucco, tiled roofs, trimmed in a cheerful teal. When I’d first seen it, I’d liked that the one-bedroom, one-bathroom home was the size of a shoebox. It made me feel like I was playing a role again: normal girl, not famous, lives paycheck to paycheck. I’d filled out the application on the kitchen counter, the butter-yellow vintage tiles cool against my hip.
Inside, I downed a glass of water, then another. Then I looked around my kitchen, hoping for a forgotten Xanax hidden in the dark caverns of my drawers. No such luck. Not even cooking sherry. I ransacked my purse, found my last strip of orange gum, and popped it into my mouth.
One thing I’d learnt in rehab: you’re never truly clean. You just swap. Alcohol for cocaine, Coca-Cola for alcohol, minty orange gum for a whole cocktail of rich girl vices: vodka, Percocet, Xanax, bad men who remind you too much of Daddy. Sure, aspartame will give you cancer, but it takes a little longer to kill you, and it annoys your family members less. Some choices are better than others. Marginally.
I set the box down on the coffee table and clicked the television on, settling on a grainy noir. When I couldn’t sleep as a kid, I’d creep downstairs. Most of the time, my father, an insomniac, was still awake. I’d crawl into his lap, navigating my way around the slosh of his ever-present whiskey, until I was snuggled under his chin. He’d have his eyes glued to some black-and-white classic that we’d watch together: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Sunset Boulevard. It Happened One Night. He’d whisper notes into my ear about the best scenes, teaching me to love his favourites: Watch John Wayne now, see how long he stays relaxed? The little smile, tells you he’s in control? Then … pop. Kicks him in the face. My father laughed, took another sip of the whiskey.
I flipped the channel. I’d had enough grief for one day.
I settled on the news. I wanted more information about the girl in Tawney’s pool. As I watched, I leafed through the photos my mother had given me. There were my parents in their youth, haunting the set of Iron Prayer. Me as a chubby and solemn kindergartner on class picture day. I set aside a photo of my father in short swim trunks at the Beverly Hills Hotel, gnashing his teeth and flexing for the camera, then another of my mother peeking through her long, dark curtain of hair, smiling shyly.
I paused. A more recent photo of my parents bookending Tawney on the steps of the Jacaranda House, soon after she’d bought it. I’d taken that one. In it, Tawney flipped me the bird.
I set it to the side. That one, I’d keep.
My hands stilled only when I caught sight of a reporter in a cream suit – not the journalist who’d chased me – standing in front of the Jacaranda House, ballet-slipper nails clutching the mic as she ran down prime-time facts:
