Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (64 page)

She saw him staring past her head, his expression intent, grim. She turned, following his gaze across the room to the corner window where the telescope and a camcorder stood on separate tripods, their lens’s pointed in the direction of the Squire mansion.

“I suggest you accept the situation and move on, Mrs. Lundberg. Maybe concentrate on your own business.”

She showed him out the door. When the door shut behind him, she added under her breath, “Thanks for nothing.”

The next day she received a scented note card in the mail. The initials S and S in an ornate scroll on the letterhead and the back of the envelope left no question regarding the sender.

Dear Mrs. Lundberg,

Thank you for your concern in the matters of my personal affairs, but rest assured I neither need nor want your unwelcome assistance.

MYOB.

Forever Yours,

Sybil Squire

MYOB.
Mind your own business
. The note was meant to make her back off. Yet Piper wasn’t buying into it. Strange for Sybil to use MYOB and not write it out. Sybil was in danger. She knew it as sure as she knew Sybil was being forced to take medication and that she did not give herself a black eye.

She reread the note, pausing at the salutation. Forever Yours.

Forever Yours
? That was peculiar. In all her publicity photos, she signed off with “Sincerely yours.”
Forever Yours
was her third movie, a film about insanity and murder. She compared the handwriting with that of the publicity photo she’d autographed two weeks ago. The handwriting looked the same, but even more strange was that she had autographed the publicity photo
Forever Yours
as well. Piper hadn’t noticed that before.

What did it mean? Was Sybil trying to tell her something? Or, was Piper looking for threats where none existed?

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Star Tattler
—
August 1952 [Archive]

Guess who was spotted at a Dude Ranch in Reno last week, awaiting the required six-week residency? Not the western-star-turned-rebel, CW, but his platinum-haired wife, who is rumored to be in a delicate condition. CW broke down the door of a mutual friend demanding to see his missing wife. The friend set her dogs on him.

CW, darling, you need help.

—Cricket Summers: Columnist to the Stars

Sybil Squire was the distraction that kept Piper from dwelling on her pending divorce. The papers had been served on Gordon and the process was in motion. Gordon’s only response had been to send her an unpaid dentist bill.

At Les Deux, over wine, the words came gushing out. Piper filled Lee in on the last several days, Sybil’s shiner, and her call to Dr. Lowdell.

“There’s obviously a connection between the visits to the bank and the Squire estate,” Lee said. “Crimes against the elderly have become big business in America, especially fraud.”

“If they’re mistreating her and stealing from her, they’re being very transparent about the whole thing. That’s the part I don’t understand.”

“Then they’ll get caught.”

“Before or after Sybil is dead?”

“I doubt they’ll go that far
.
I’m missing all the mystery and intrigue. I want to come over and play spy with you. I’ll bring my own telescope.” Lee blew a kiss at two rival agents from CAA who stood chatting near the gurgling water tank in the restaurant’s patio. “What about that mystery car cruising your neighborhood?”

Piper realized she hadn’t seen the dark car with the tinted windows in weeks.

“I think it belonged to them. Before worming their way in as her caregivers, they’d staked out the house and neighborhood.”

“So it wasn’t the Gorgon after all?”

“Gordon never bothered to contact me, let alone try to get me back. I was such a sucker. I could’ve continued to stay with the asshole until he traded me in on a younger, more impressionable sucker. Lee, how could I have married such a cold, manipulative man?”

“You have a good heart. You’re kind and trusting. Everyone is exposed to someone like Gordon in his or her lifetime. It’s a rite of passage. Move on.”

Since the Vogt’s departure, Piper kept a running correspondence with them via the internet. She collected their mail and sent them a copy of whatever she thought important, faxing or scanning it into the computer. One day after scanning several pieces of mail to the Vogt’s, Belle e-mailed back:

The letter you sent in that last batch was from Sybil

Squire’s former housekeeper. Seems she’s concerned

about Lady Squire. Because of your preoccupation with

our tragic leading lady, I trust you’ll want to follow up on this.

A bit of advice, Piper, the less contact with the neighbors and

their affairs, the better.

It’s not your concern.

Belle

Piper nearly jumped out of her chair. The housekeeper was someone she very much wanted to connect with. If she were concerned about Sybil, that made two of them. She could be her biggest ally. Together, they had a better chance of finding out what was going on over there. Piper dug through the morning mail until she found the letter signed by Vera Wade.

She paused for a moment before calling. Belle’s advice was equivalent to Sybil’s “mind your own business.” Belle wasn’t here. She didn’t see what Piper saw. She quickly dialed the phone number at the bottom of the letter before she could change her mind.

It rang and rang. On the tenth ring, someone picked up.

“My name is Piper Lundberg. I’m calling about Sybil Squire.”

“What’s that about Sybil Squire?” she said.

“I live next door … in the guesthouse.”

“Yes. Yes. Hello? Hello, are you still there?” she said, her voice rising with excitement.

“I’m here.”

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to get your call. The worry’s been making me just sick. Sybil, er, Mrs. Squire, how’s she doing, do you know? Have you seen her or talked to her lately?”

“Yes. I’m worried too.” Piper tried to tell her what had transpired in the last few weeks, but most of what Piper said was lost to the woman, garbled because of her hearing aid.

“Look, I’m coming over there,” Vera said. “We gotta’ talk face-to-face.”

Piper paced the small living room, waiting. Black clouds rolled in and the wind picked up, whining under the eaves, blowing gusts strong enough to rattle the windows. Another storm was on the way. She waited, training the telescope on the narrow streets that snaked throughout the neighborhood. She could see a stretch of Sunset Boulevard.

An hour later, as the last glimmer of daylight faded, the familiar battered green VW chugged up the hill. It shuddered to a noisy stop in front of the Squire house. Vera Wade climbed out, the teased red hair—faded to an orange hue—blew around wildly in the wind. She wore purple tights and a long pink t-shirt with a picture of two big-eyed kittens on the front.

She walked up the driveway toward Piper’s place, slowing to look at the Squire mansion. She stopped, took a piece of gum from her lime-green purse, unwrapped it, and stuck it into her mouth. The wind snatched the wrapper from her fingers. With the rubber sole of her orthopedic shoes—the only thing about her that appeared stodgy and sensible—she stomped down on it before it could blow away. After depositing the wrapper into her purse, she continued up the driveway.

Piper had liked Vera the moment they met, the day she came to her door with an invitation to coffee. Not exactly the sort she would have expected to be a loyal, long-time housekeeper to a famous, reclusive star. Then again, loyalty came in all shapes and sizes.

After greeting Vera on the deck, she ushered her inside. The strong wind at her back pressed her along amid a swirl of eucalyptus leaves.

She stood on the hardwood just inside the door, smoothing down her flyaway hair with both hands. “That’s a pretty big computer,” Vera said pointing at the editing bay in the dining area.

“It’s what I use to edit film. It’s my job.”

Vera nodded. “I should have thought to call you myself. You seemed to care about Mrs. Squire. It showed that day when you came for coffee. With you living right next door, well, you’d know as good as anybody if something funny was going on over there.”

“That’s an understatement.”

She accepted a Heineken, waved away the glass, and drank straight from the bottle. She sat on the edge of the couch, her body poised for action, like someone not used to sitting for long periods of time.

Piper pulled up the ottoman and sat in front of her. “What happened? Why did you stop working for her?”

She adjusted her hearing aid by twisting a finger inside one ear. “I was told I wasn’t needed no more. I went to visit her every day in the hospital and she never, not once, said anything about canning me. No one was more surprised than yours truly when I showed up that morning and this woman, the one they sent home with her, says ‘She don’t need you no more.’”

“And you accepted that?”

“Hell no. I told that stuck-up nurse that I don’t take orders from her or nobody but the mistress. I told her if Mrs. Squire wants to let me go, she’s gotta be the one to say so.”

“And did she?”

Vera nodded. “I had to wait awhile, but Sybil signed my paycheck and handed it to me personally. That gal made it out for her cause Sybil’s hands were still bandaged from the burns, but I watched her sign it. You coulda’ knocked me over with a canary feather. Twenty years I worked for her, all day, five days a week. Sometimes on the weekends if she needed me. The only reason I wasn’t a live-in is ‘cause of Nutmeg. Nutmeg’s my cat. Cats and canaries don’t mix. Those birds are her life, you know? They’re what kept her going all these years—her birds and me. We was friends. Good friends. She don’t have much to do with people.” Vera paused. “‘Cept you. She took to you.”

“She did? She said that?”

“Yeah. She don’t invite people over unless she likes them. She talked about you that day I picked her up at the bank. You reminded her of someone from her past.”

Her grandmother. Vera’s words warmed her.

Since meeting Sybil, she had reread both biographies and every article written about her. There were plenty of discrepancies, but one thing remained undisputed. Sybil’s life had been fraught with selfish, abusive, and deceptive people. People she loved, people who should have loved and protected her, but instead had hurt her. First her mother, then her father, then her first husband.

Now it seemed to be happening again. Only this time the villains were preying on an elderly Sybil.

“Do you know anything about these people living in her house?” Piper asked.

“Nothing, not a danged thing. She said if she wanted to stay in her own house, she had to have live-in help, something about Social Services setting it up.”

“And that was it? She cut you off?”

She made a sour face. “I call, and that one over there,” she tossed her head in the direction of the Squire house, “tells me the mistress will call me back. She don’t call back. Except…” Vera leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Except that one night. She called me out of the blue. It was real late. I was sleeping. By the time I got my hearing aid adjusted so’s I could get what she was saying, she was gone. I called back, but the line was busy an’ stayed busy all night. Ain’t been able to reach her since.”

“When was that? Do you remember what night?”

The woman closed her eyes, deep in thought. “It was the night one of her old movies came on the tube. I watched it, like I always do when she’s on. Then, by golly, she calls. I thought she might’ve wanted to talk about the movie. We used to do that, y’know, watch them together when they came on AMC, the matinees mostly. If one came on in the evening, we hashed it over the next day. She liked to tell me all about the location, or about the funny things that happened, bloopers, stuff like that. It was getting so I knew most of the stories.”

Two of her movies had aired in the past month,
Delta Queen
and
Shady Lady
. “Shady Lady?” Piper asked.

“Yeah, that’s the one, Shady Lady. She liked that one. Liked any roles where she got to be a tough gal with a soft heart. That one sure had meat to it.”

Piper pulled up a TV guide on the internet, looking for the night
Shady Lady
had aired. Saturday. Saturday night at eleven p.m.

The night Piper found her wandering the garden in the rain.

“She has a black eye,” Piper told Vera. “A shiner to rival all shiners.”

“A shiner, huh?
They
do that to her?”

“She told her doctor she fell in the pool. He believes her. I don’t. Would she lie to him?”

“Oh, honey, you bet she would. If it served her, she’d lie to the Pope. Drinkers and junkies live on lies. She’s both. I ain’t telling stories out of school. It’s common knowledge that she’s got problems where booze and pills are concerned. One time this quack doctor told her she had an addictive brain. That tickled her pretty good. ‘Addictive brain? So that’s what it is, is it?’ she said and laughed and laughed.” Vera shook her head from side to side. “She told me in the hospital that she wasn’t responsible for the fire that put her there. That’s a lie. She didn’t want to lose her independence. She was afraid they wouldn’t let her go back home if they knew she’d passed out and started the fire herself.”