Star Walk (A Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 3) Page 7

  How long had it been since she’d seen or talked to Richard? Ages. He was a make-up artist in Hollywood, and she’d become friends with him while still on the force when researching the disguises used by a bank robber turned murderer. He loved Hollywood, lived and breathed it. Loved the golden age, loved all the old stars, the black and white movies, film noir.

  Richard would know.

  She grabbed her phone and scrolled through her contacts. There he was. She just hoped he hadn’t changed his number in the last however many months it had been.

  The phone rang once, twice, three times. Voicemail.

  “This is Richard. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you. Have a fabulous day, darling.”

  Lacey chuckled as she left her message. Richard was unabashedly gay, something she loved about him. No pretense, no denial, no playing the pronoun game. What you saw was what you got from Richard. Honest to a fault.

  So now what? she wondered. She couldn’t sit here on her thumbs waiting for his call back. For all she knew, he could be on location somewhere. She stared at her laptop. No, she wasn’t going to bash her head against this particular brick wall any more right now. She had other things she could do.

  It was a good thing, too, because Richard didn’t call her back until evening. She’d gotten her laundry done, cleaned the apartment and gotten through her entire workout in the meantime.

  “Richard!” she said gratefully as she answered her phone.

  “Hey, sweetie,” he replied. “Long time no talk. How you doing, honey?”

  “Pretty good,” Lacey said. In her mind, she could see his cheerful face: wavy, sandy brown hair, sparkling blue eyes and wide smile. “I wasn’t sure when I’d hear from you; I know you’re busy. But I need some information that only you can tell me.”

  “Oh, you think?” he asked, laughing. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “I am.” She gave him a brief summary of her life since leaving the LAPD; hooking up with Sam, investigating ghostly mysteries. Then she told him about the Laurel Canyon mansion and her suspicions of Lance Tynan.

  “Lance Tynan. Boy, that’s going back a lot of years.”

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed. “He died in 1948, supposedly of a cardiac arrest, but I’m reading his autopsy report and I have a gut feeling he overdosed on heroin. Were the studios still covering for stars back in the forties? Would it make sense that they might gloss over the autopsy findings?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Richard said. “The studios all had ‘fixers’ then, people who would ‘clean up’ the messes the stars got themselves into. They might lean on the police and the coroner, maybe ask them to downplay one aspect while playing up another. It wouldn’t be lying, exactly, but they could shift the emphasis one way or another. You gotta remember, back then a majority of the stars were living pretty high on the hog. Lavish parties, lots of alcohol, drugs and sex. Yet there were very few who were ever busted for their illicit behavior. Do you remember Bob Mitchum?”

  “Sure,” Lacey said. “Heaven Knows Mr. Allison.”

  “Right. Well, before that, just about the same time as Lance Tynan’s death, Mitchum was arrested for smoking marijuana. The raid was part of a sting operation to catch the Hollywood crowd, but the word went out and most of the stars stayed away. Mitchum didn’t get the tipoff for some reason, so he got nailed. The police and the press made an example of him, but he was only the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority were never caught, their illegal behavior never exposed.”

  Lacey licked her lips in anticipation. “So it’s absolutely possible that Lance could have been a regular heroin user and it would never have made the papers?”

  “Oh, sure,” Richard said. “Very possible.”

  “Great,” she said, certain now she was on the right track. “My partner said that sleep was bliss for him, sleep was escape, so the heroin makes sense.”

  “Right,” Richard agreed. “Heroin’s a downer. He’d just shoot up and bliss out. All problems forgotten.”

  “Yeah, and apparently he had plenty of them. The ghost has a real aversion to any religious symbols, and Sam said there was a lot of sex. There’s a conflict there somewhere.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Richard said. “Probably because he was gay.”

  Lacey’s brain lurched to a halt. “He was? You know that?”

  “Oh, come on, honey. You think I wouldn’t? Puh-leeze.”

  Lacey pondered this new direction. “He was married, even had a kid, but…”

  “Eh. The studio plan. Doesn’t mean a thing. Gay as a picnic basket. So if he had any strong religious background, that could definitely set up a big time conflict.”

  “His father was a Methodist preacher,” she said.

  “Bingo. There you go. My work here is done.”

  Lacey sat back in her chair and laughed. “Richard, I love you. You are the best.”

  “I get told that all the time, honey. Don’t hate me because I’m fabulous.”

  “You are too much,” she said. “Okay, I think you’ve answered all my questions. Now I’m off to the races. But, hey, how are you doing? Working hard?”

  “Or hardly working. No, I’m doing great. Working on a weekly series on Netflix. Kind of a Game of Thrones knockoff. It’s a lot of fun.”

  “Wow, great,” she said. “Steady paycheck and everything.”

  “Yup, pretty sweet. And”—he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level—“got a new boyfriend. I think this might be the one.”

  “Really? That is wonderful. What’s his name? How’d you meet?”

  “He’s on the show; he’s a lighting tech. Name’s Greg. You’d like him; cute butt.”

  Lacey laughed. “That’s fabulous. I’m so happy for you.”

  “And what about you?” he asked. “After you kicked Derrick to the curb, I’m sure you had to beat them off with a stick.”

  “Yeah, not so much,” she said. “I, uh, I haven’t been in any hurry. It’ll happen when it happens.”

  “Well, don’t wait too long,” he said. “Sex is good for the skin, you know.”

  “Richard, I’m going to have to call you more often. You just light up my day.”

  “I’m happy to sprinkle glitter on you any time you need it, sweetie. Good luck with the case. Let me know how it turns out.”

  “I will. Take care, Richard.”

  Lacey keyed off the call with a goofy grin on her face. Why had she not kept more in touch with him? He was a gem. Well, she would from here on out.

  But now… now she had a new line of inquiry. She yawned and checked her watch. It was after ten P.M. Too late, really, to start going after it now. She knew herself well enough to know if she started now, she wouldn’t get to bed until the wee hours of the morning. No, she’d start on it early tomorrow.

  Okay, Lance, she thought, I’m coming for you. Get ready to give up your secrets.

  ~~~

  ELEVEN

  After checking her emails and returning a few messages about possible jobs, Lacey dug in. She’d realized sometime during the night, one of those times she’d awoken to the buzzing of her brain working overtime, that it wasn’t Lance she had to go after. She’d vetted him—or his persona—pretty completely. No, it was his father she had to research. The preacher.

  She checked death records for Everett Maples, Sr. and found him. Born 1876 in Buckford, Missouri, died 1944 in Pershing, Ohio. From there she switched to obituaries and found one. Obviously being an inconsequential preacher in a little backwater town didn’t warrant a lot of coverage in the digital world, even if he was the father of a movie star. Lacey guessed that the studio had also had a hand in that; they wouldn’t want their creation, Lance Tynan, deconstructed back to Everett Maples, Jr. His real name didn’t roll off the tongue so well, nor did it convey hunky leading man charisma.

  Leading Man. She wondered when the studio heads discovered their golden boy was gay. Or if they knew all along and didn’t care.

  She had to wonde
r about the marriage to Nora Messenger. Probably all engineered by the studio, no doubt endowed with a hefty payoff or an unwritten guarantee of acting roles, all in exchange for a tight lip. It occurred to Lacey that it could well have been Nora who hid the hypodermic needle at the death scene.

  And the child? She could be Lance’s—or not. Lacey felt sure Lance could perform at least once with a female for the desired offspring and the cover of normality. If not, Nora probably had other options. Lacey wondered idly if the daughter, Doreen, had ever had her DNA tested.

  But back to Lance’s father.

  Everett John Maples, Sr. was born to poor sharecroppers in Buckford, Missouri, June 27, 1876. He was the fifth child of twelve, and the third son. With little schooling, he learned to read the Bible, but was put to work in the fields at the age of ten. He learned general skills and traveled around working as a carpenter, logger, horse trainer and field hand until the age of twenty-six, when he preached his first sermon at a small church in rural Ohio. Feeling the hand of God on his shoulder, he became a fiery and passionate Methodist preacher and often cautioned his parishioners about the consequences of a life of sin. He married Jean Warfield in 1903, and they had nine children. Everett was preceded in death by his wife and five of his children. He was survived by two sons, Everett Jr. and Percy, and two daughters, Catherine and Beatrice.

  Lacey pondered that. Sounded normal enough—tough, but normal. In those days, work was hard, living conditions were often squalid, life expectancy wasn’t long. Some people managed to find a lucky break and rise above their meager beginnings—like Lance—but most didn’t. Most died in obscurity, their bodies used up and thrown away on the garbage heap of poverty.

  But none of this was telling her what she needed to know. Obituaries, she knew, kept to the maxim about not speaking ill of the dead, so she had to look further.

  She found death records through a genealogy website. Most were a single line of text, just birth and death dates, and the burial site. But then she found a copy of Everett’s death certificate.

  Cause of death: cirrhosis of the liver.

  Ah, she thought. Here’s his Achilles heel. He drank. A lot. Cirrhosis didn’t develop overnight. The consequences of a life of sin, indeed.

  Except Lacey knew alcoholism was not usually an indicator of simply a life of sin. What it indicated more than anything was self-medication. Drinking enough to push the inner demons into a corner so, for a while at least, the drinker could be free of their demands.

  Drinking… and shooting heroin. Like father, like son.

  So what were your demons, Everett? Were they the same as your son’s?

  And how in the hell was she going to find out?

  ~~~

  Faced with another brick wall, Lacey disengaged and went back to normal daily tasks. Housework was never her favorite chore, and usually she was just as happy to put it on the back burner for more exciting things, but now she knew it was time to catch up. She vacuumed, cleaned the kitchen and was about to tackle the science experiments in the very back of the refrigerator when her phone rang.

  Mead View Comm.

  Celeste.

  “Hello,” she answered warmly.

  “Lacey? It’s Celeste Gardner. I’m sorry to call. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “No, not at all,” Lacey said. “Well, some house cleaning, but nothing that can’t wait. How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Celeste said, “but I’m afraid… I can’t go with you on Saturday.”

  Lacey walked to the couch and sank down on it. “Oh? That’s too bad. If you have a conflict, we could move it to another day or another time.”

  “No. No, it’s not that.” Celeste sounded hesitant.

  Lacey’s ears pricked up. “What is it, Celeste? What’s wrong?”

  Celeste sighed heavily. “It’s, uh, it’s my granddaughter. She doesn’t want me to do this.”

  “Oh?” Lacey pulled in a breath and forced herself to choose her words carefully. “And she doesn’t want you to do it because…?”

  “I’m sorry. She’s afraid that, uh, that you might be, uh…”

  Lacey got it. “Some kind of scammer?”

  A reluctant pause. “Yes.”

  “We don’t want money,” Lacey said quietly. “We’re being paid by the property owner.”

  “I know. I told her that. She just doesn’t like it. Doesn’t trust it.”

  “Doesn’t trust us,” Lacey said. She levered her legs up onto the couch and stretched out, ready to settle in. “She thinks we’ll gain your confidence first, then hit you up for money later.”

  “Yes. I believe so.”

  “Okay,” Lacey said, blowing out an exasperated breath, “I understand. I do. I worked for the LAPD for eight years, so I’ve seen all kinds of scams. If there’s any way to bilk people out of their money, someone will figure out how. Actually I think your granddaughter is being very smart about this.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. She’s smart to be skeptical. To want assurance. To want proof. So I’m ready to give that to her. Let’s do this: how about if I come to your place and meet your granddaughter? I will bring the video I shot of Sam’s two encounters with Estelle so you both can see exactly what happened there. Then, after that, we can talk about the next step.”

  The silence went on a little too long for Lacey’s liking.

  “And if either of you still have any reservations, well, we just won’t do it. It’ll be totally up to you.”

  “I think,” Celeste said, speaking slowly, “that sounds all right to me, but I’m not sure Paula would agree. She’s… stubborn.”

  “What if I talk to her? Would she be open to just talking to me on the phone?”

  “Hmm. That might work. Let me try that.”

  “Okay. And tell her I’ve got references she can check. She can talk to any number of people at the LAPD. She can verify my private investigator license. I have absolutely no problem with her running a background check on me. As a matter of fact, I just passed one by the California State Prison, so I know she won’t find anything suspicious.”

  “California State Prison?” Celeste’s voice held a trace of unease.

  “An… acquaintance is an inmate, and he’s asked me to come see him. It’s just a personal favor. But I had to pass the background check before anything.”

  “Oh, I see. All right. Well, let me call Paula and put this to her. May she call you at this same number?”

  “Absolutely. It’s my cell, so any day, any time. I’ll be happy to answer any questions she might have.”

  “All right. Thank you, Lacey. Again, I’m sorry about this.”

  “Not a problem,” Lacey assured her. “We’ll just do what we can.”

  Lacey keyed off the call and folded her arms across her chest, staring up at the ceiling. This was not good. Estelle needed to see Celeste. If she wouldn’t agree to come would they ever convince Estelle to move on?

  She pursed her lips and blew a raspberry. She did not need this right now.

  It was a good thing she had already committed herself to the house cleaning, because she needed the physical activity to keep her mind off the roadblocks she was encountering. She ended up unloading the entire refrigerator and washing down the shelves, the inside walls and the door compartments. Then she put all the food back in a more organized way, although she realized that might not last long.

  Even as she worked, though, she felt a creeping annoyance with this setback. As she’d told Celeste, she completely understood her granddaughter’s skepticism, even applauded it, but she was angry that she had to prove her own integrity. Here she was trying to help everyone involved and she was having her intentions called into question. It grated on her.

  So when her phone rang in the late afternoon and the name Paula Ward appeared on the screen, she took a few deep breaths and cautioned herself to keep her annoyance in check.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Fitzpatrick?”


  “Yes, this is she.”

  “My name is Paula Ward. I am Celeste Gardner’s granddaughter. She said you wanted to speak to me.”

  “Yes, I do,” Lacey said, taking a chair. “Thank you for getting back to me. I’m hoping we can come to an understanding so that everyone involved is served. Your grandmother told you what we’re trying to do here, right?”

  “Um, yes, she did. It sounds pretty unorthodox, I have to say.”

  Lacey allowed a small laugh of derision. “You’re right about that. When I was on the LAPD, if anyone had told me I’d end up working with a medium and talking to ghosts to solve mysteries, I never would have believed it.”

  “So you’ve… done this before?”

  “Yes, we’ve been working together almost a year and have solved several cases. I wonder if you remember the Fairfax Stalker case from last year?”

  Paula was slow to answer. “I, uh, yes, I do remember that. And there was something about a psychic who helped crack the case?”

  “That’s right. That psychic is my partner, Sam Firecloud. He’s the one who made contact with the ghosts of those girls and found out where their bodies were buried.”

  “Those poor girls who were kidnapped and… killed?”

  “Yes. I acted as liaison with the police and fed them the information Sam got so they could find the bodies. And we got the killer, as well, even though he’d moved to Oklahoma.”

  “Yes, I remember that now. That was commendable.” Paula’s voice was losing its edge of suspicion.

  “So,” Lacey said, “what we’re doing now is similar, except there are no murders involved. The owner of the house wants to rent out her luxury apartments, but to do that, we have to convince the ghosts to move on. Your great aunt, Estelle DeVoe, is one of those ghosts. From what Sam and I have seen so far, we believe Estelle wants very badly to see her sister one last time. That could be the one thing that’s tying her to the house, and we’re hoping if we can arrange this meeting, Estelle will let go and move on. I also believe that it pains your grandmother to know her sister is in anguish, so helping Estelle will put her at ease, as well. To my mind, everyone benefits.”