Bit Player Page 6

  Aunt Dulcie smiled. “Your grandmother always said Pearl Bishop was a character. She stayed in Hollywood and worked in movies and television for years. I remember Jerusha saying she’d seen Pearl on TV from time to time, in an episode of Dragnet or Gunsmoke or The Fugitive, one of those old classic TV shows. If Pearl is alive, surely she must have retired by now.”

  “If she’s alive I’ll find her. After reading Grandma’s letters, I’d like to meet her.” I bent over and kissed Aunt Dulcie. “I have to leave now. I’m due over at Aunt Caro’s. But I want to come back and read more of your letters.”

  “You come see me any time,” Aunt Dulcie said. “I enjoy visiting with you.”

  Pat sent me off with jars of homemade apple butter and apple chutney, made from last year’s crop, decorated with labels that read FOXWORTH ORCHARDS and showed a picture of her and Bruce filling jars from a kettle in their kitchen. “Private reserve,” Pat said, “made from first-crop Gravensteins and stirred with mine own hand.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Can’t wait to try both of them.”

  “They’re good right out of the jar.” Pat walked with me out to my car. “I enjoy visiting with you, too. So don’t be a stranger. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “No, not yet. The letters are fascinating, just from a historical standpoint. Primary sources about life in the late thirties and early forties.”

  “Now you sound like your father the history professor,” Pat said. “Does this have something to do with one of your private investigator cases?”

  “Not really a formal case. Let’s just say it’s a mystery that took place in old-time Hollywood. I thought Grandma’s letters from the era would give me some insights.”

  “Well, I’m intrigued,” Pat said. “You’re welcome to come and read the letters any time. On the condition that I get the scoop when you’re ready to dish it out.”

  “That’s a deal.”

  After leaving Graton, I drove east through the rural landscape of rolling hills dotted with apple trees and wine grapes. Nature gave way to buildings as I reached Santa Rosa, the Sonoma County seat. I headed north on Highway 101 and took the College Avenue exit. My aunt and uncle lived northeast of downtown, in the St. Rose district, a neighborhood of old homes and commercial and institutional buildings that had grown up around St. Rose Church, a Gothic Revival stone structure built by local Italian stone masons in 1900. Many of the homes in the district dated from the 1870s to the 1940s, including several grand nineteenth-century homes and a number of well-maintained twenties-era bungalows, like the one I parked in front of, on Washington Street near Tenth. I walked to the front porch and rang the doorbell.

  Caroline Howard, known to the family as Caro, is my father’s younger sister. Her nickname results from Dad’s inability, as a toddler, to pronounce all three syllables of his baby sister’s name. Like Dad, she was born in the forties after Grandpa Ted returned from the war and went to college on the GI Bill. Dad got his father’s red hair, freckles and green eyes. So did I, although in my case, the freckles are faint and fewer in number. Caro resembles her mother, Grandma Jerusha, in her willowy figure and dark blond hair, now streaked with gray and worn chin-length.

  On this warm June afternoon, Caro wore khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt with a tropical print of pink and purple hibiscus. She greeted me with a kiss and ushered me through the kitchen into the family room, where a Puccini aria, “O Mio Babbino Caro,” poured from a portable CD player. She lowered the volume and waved me toward a chair. French windows at the back of the house opened onto a deep, narrow backyard. Red, yellow and pink roses ranged along the fence. A square patch of garden held neat rows of vegetables, with tomatoes and green beans growing up inside their metal cages.

  Caro’s laptop computer was on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Next to it was a thick pile of papers, a manuscript, the pages festooned with yellow Post-its covered with notes in red ink. My aunt is a fiction writer. Her novels are big fat ones, chockful of impeccable historical research, fascinating characters, intrigue—altogether good reads, the kind of books I savor while sitting on the sofa with a cat on my lap and a cup of tea at my side.

  “I enjoyed your latest book,” I told her. “The most recent published one, that is.”

  She laughed. “Music to writers’ ears. We never tire of hearing it. That means I’ve managed to pull it off one more time. It’s the current opus that’s occupying me this afternoon, the California Gold Rush book.” She pointed at the stack of pages. “That’s the copyedited manuscript, which I got in the mail two days ago. Of course the publisher wants me to review it and get it back to New York as soon as possible, preferably yesterday. Neil is off playing tennis so I’ve had the house to myself all morning. I’m making progress. Want some iced tea? I just brewed a batch of sun tea.”

  “Yes, that sounds great.”

  “Coming up.” She went out to the deck at the back of the house and came back a moment later carrying a big jar of water and tea bags that had been left to brew in the sun. In the kitchen she filled a couple of glass tumblers with ice and tea, with a wedge of lemon for garnish. She returned to the family room, handed a glass to me, then sat down on the sofa.

  “I’ve been reading this manuscript all morning. You know, I finished this book nearly a year ago. Took me over three years to research and write it. I sent it off to my agent, who then took several months to sell it and negotiate the contract with the publisher. In the meantime I’ve been making notes and doing research for other projects. Now here comes this manuscript I thought was finished. But it’s not quite done. It never is, until the book’s in print and on the shelves. I have to answer the copyeditor’s questions and I suspect I need to tweak a couple of chapters in the middle. It’s rather like a kid who’s left home and moves back again.”

  I smiled and set my glass on a nearby coaster. “Speaking of kids, how are yours? Where is Daria these days?”

  “At Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, thank goodness, and not Afghanistan or Iraq.”

  My cousin Daria, a few years younger than me, had joined the Army ROTC while in college and she’d been commissioned as a second lieutenant after graduation. She had just been promoted to major and had already done a couple of tours of duty in Iraq. I knew that her parents worried about her. Caro and her husband Neil Lowry, who had recently retired from his job as a city planner for Santa Rosa, had two sons as well. Alex was my age. Keith was younger than Daria, and like his sister, unmarried. Alex, who lived in Sacramento, had a wife and two children, one of them a three-month-old baby. Caro happily showed me the most recent photos of her grandchildren.

  “Are you going to see Brian while you’re up here?” she asked.

  My younger brother, Brian, follows in the family tradition of being a teacher, like Dad and Grandpa Ted. He and his wife and children live in Sonoma, east of Santa Rosa. Normally I would have taken the opportunity to head southeast on Highway 12 and see him and his family, but not today. I shook my head. “I was, but when I called a few days ago to tell them I’d be in the area, Brian said they were heading up to Yosemite for the weekend. They left Thursday and won’t be back till Tuesday.”

  We chatted awhile longer, catching up on family news about my divorced parents. Dad was enjoying his retirement. Mother still worked, running her restaurant in Monterey, where she was surrounded by an extended family mingling Irish with Italian.

  Caro set aside her glass. “I dug out those letters after I talked with you. I’ve read through them several times since Mom died. I have thought about using them as the basis for a novel set during World War Two. Even made some notes and started developing a plot and characters. There I go, mining my own family for fiction, again. Hey, that’s what writers do. Everything in our lives is grist for the mill. Our family does have a rich and varied history. In fact, it was an old family story that started me on the Gold Rush novel. You remember Uncle Woody, Mom’s brother? He was a mining engineer up in Jackson and he had s
ome yarns to tell about the Forty-niners and gold mining. Anyway, the World War Two homefront era was such an interesting time and Mom was a participant, right in the thick of it. Barriers were being broken all over the place, with women in the workforce, like Mom, operating a welder’s torch at Kaiser Shipyard. And the breakdown of color barriers, with different races working together.”

  “I know,” I said. “There was a huge influx of African Americans moving to the Bay Area from the South for war-related work. I got plenty of information when I interviewed Grandma for the oral history to submit to the Rosie the Riveter National Monument.”

  “I listened to that recording again,” Caro said. “Mom really had an eye for detail.”

  “That’s what I found while reading through Dulcie’s letters. It’s not the Rosie the Riveter period of Grandma’s life I’m interested in right now, though. It’s the years she spent in Hollywood.”

  “These letters are primarily correspondence between Mom and Dad while he was overseas,” Caro said. “She saved all of his and he saved as many of hers as he could. But there are some letters from earlier in their relationship, while they were dating and engaged. So why are you interested in the Hollywood period?”

  I told Caro about my conversation with Henry Calhoun, the old man behind the counter in the movie memorabilia shop.

  “That’s bizarre,” Caro said, leaning forward. “Mom having a fling with an actor who was murdered? I’m sure she must have had relationships with other guys before she met Dad, but after? I don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t either. But there was an actor named Ralph Tarrant, and he was murdered. If Grandma did know the guy, even in passing, she may have mentioned it in one of her letters. Although it’s more likely in one of the letters she wrote to Dulcie than in her correspondence with Grandpa. I’m hoping the letters you have will give me more details on her roommates.”

  “Let’s get to work, then. The letters are in my office.” Caro led the way to the bedroom she’d converted into a workspace. The letters were in plastic storage bins. She left me to return to the family room and her copyedited manuscript. I sat down on the floor and booted up my laptop. Then I opened the first bin and delved into the letters. The postmarks on the envelopes were roughly chronological by year, and the slim bundle I held was dated 1941.

  I took out the notes I’d started earlier. At the time Ted Howard met Jerusha Layne, he’d been working for his Uncle Walt, the man who ran the produce stand at the Farmers Market. He’d lived with his uncle as well, so that was the address on the envelope, Chatsworth out in the San Fernando Valley. The community was part of the vast urban sprawl that was Los Angeles, but before World War II and its postwar boom, Chatsworth had been agricultural, its scenery a backdrop for Western movies.

  I opened the first envelope, with a May 1941 postmark. Jerusha had written to Ted Howard shortly after their first dinner date, thanking him for a wonderful evening. I smiled as I read it, then moved on to the next letter.

  A letter dated July 1941 caught my attention. It mentioned Mildred Peretti, the young woman who’d moved into the rented bungalow in January 1940. Like the roommate before her, Mildred gave up on Hollywood and returned home to Colorado. They were looking for a new roommate, Jerusha wrote. Pearl knew someone, a woman she’d met while working on her latest movie at Metro. Sylvia Jasper was from Mobile, Alabama. The roommates planned to invite her over to look at the house—and to look at Sylvia before making a decision. The next letter told me that Sylvia had moved into the space Mildred had vacated, the converted back porch. It appeared Sylvia had passed muster. Or had she?

  “She seems nice enough,” Jerusha had written. There was a “but” in there, I thought. I read through the letter again, wondering what I detected between the lines. Maybe Jerusha hadn’t liked Sylvia at all. Perhaps she’d been overruled by Anne and Pearl. Or it could be that the financial need for a fourth rent contributor had trumped any doubts about Sylvia. Dulcie had told me that at some point there was a problem with one of the roommates. Not paying the rent or being messy, Dulcie had said, or something more serious. She didn’t remember which roommate. Was Sylvia the problem?

  The next few letters, written in August 1941, hinted at what I’d already surmised, that Sylvia had her faults. Jerusha painted the picture of a flighty Southern belle who liked to party and was promiscuous. It was clear that Jerusha Layne didn’t much care for Sylvia Jasper. And finally, there was the name I’d been looking for—Ralph Tarrant.

  Chapter 8

  Los Angeles, California, August 1941

  “May I sit down?” the man said.

  The three young woman at the table glanced up from their lunches. “Suit yourself,” Anne said, then she turned back to Pearl and Jerusha. The commissary at Metro was crowded that August afternoon as the employees ate their midday meals, a welcome break from their shooting schedules. When the studio was busy, as it was today, chairs and tables were at a premium. The stars mixed with the extras and bit players and everyone mixed with the crew.

  Jerusha heard Marjorie Main’s raucous laugh and looked over at a nearby table, where the well-known character actress sat with her co-star, Clark Gable. They were both in costume, Main in a high-collared black dress, Gable wearing a vest over his shirt and tie. He cut into a steak as he chuckled at something Main said. The stars were filming a Western called Honky Tonk, with young Lana Turner, whose terrific reviews in Ziegfeld Girl had elevated her to the A-list.

  Pearl was playing a dance hall girl in Honky Tonk. She sat to Jerusha’s left, wearing her costume, a low-cut, spangled red dress, a napkin spread over her bodice as she ate her ham sandwich. Earlier she’d been regaling her friends with the latest gossip from the set. It seemed Gable’s wife, actress Carole Lombard, wasn’t happy about Gable working with Turner, the young blonde who was getting such a build-up from the studio. Gable liked blondes, and he’d sent Lana flowers the first day of production. So Lombard showed up on set during the filming of a love scene. “That put the lid on anything Clark had in mind, and how!” Pearl added.

  Anne was at the studio for a costume fitting for her role as a gangster’s girlfriend in Shadow of the Thin Man, with William Powell and Myrna Loy. She was subdued, having just heard that a stuntman she knew had been killed on location while filming They Died with their Boots On, with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. The picture about Custer was shooting about forty miles north of Los Angeles, with Raoul Walsh directing, and this was the second death during production.

  Then the man showed up and asked if he could join them. He sat down at Jerusha’s right, his lunch on a tray. How could he eat roast chicken on such a hot summer day? She herself only had the appetite and money for a green salad. Frequently she brought her own lunch but since Pearl and Anne were at the studio today she’d agreed to meet them in the commissary.

  He was dark and good-looking, dressed in a gray pinstriped suit. On his right hand was a wide gold ring engraved with some sort of repeating design. He smiled and opened his napkin with a flourish. “My name is Ralph Tarrant. And you ladies?”

  British, Jerusha thought. His plummy accent reminded her of Leslie Howard or George Sanders. The housemates introduced themselves and went back to eating, but this Tarrant fellow wanted to talk. Jerusha picked at her salad, making polite conversation. She was finishing up a bit part in a movie called When Ladies Meet, starring Joan Crawford and Greer Garson. Tarrant said he had worked with Garson in a London stage production. He himself was currently filming something with Hedy Lamarr.

  “These bit parts,” he said, “they keep you busy here at the studio?”

  “Busy enough,” Jerusha said. “I’ve made several movies this year, here and at other studios.”

  She pushed away the plate that held her salad, thinking about the trajectory of her Hollywood career so far. She’d been an extra and a bit player. Featured roles were the next step on the ladder to stardom. They all hoped for stardom, didn’t they? That one big break, when th
e director noticed what a terrific reading she was giving those few lines. That big part, the featured role that put her name on the poster. Surely it would come, someday. Soon, she hoped. Maybe her next picture, Babes on Broadway, with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, would provide that break.

  But there were other roles for a young woman, and Ted had been hinting at that over the summer. They’d been seeing each other quite often since they met a few months ago. It was getting serious. Too fast, she thought. Ted wanted a wife and he wanted Jerusha to take that role. Marriage and children, yes, she was open to that. But not yet. Hollywood and its stardust still beckoned.

  As he tucked into his roast chicken the Englishman kept talking. Then he touched Jerusha’s hand and asked what she was doing Saturday night. What a wolf, she thought. He’s on the make.

  She shook her head and pulled her hand away from his. “I’m seeing someone.”

  He smiled. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  A tray carrying a plate of fruit salad and a glass of iced tea landed on the table on the other side of Tarrant. “Lord have mercy, it’s hot,” Sylvia Jasper said in the Southern drawl that became more pronounced when Sylvia was directing her attention to a man. The new housemate unbuttoned the two top buttons on the sheer white blouse she wore, then fanned herself with her right hand. She stretched and arched her back, showing off the curve of her bosom, barely constrained in a wispy lace brassiere. Then she leaned forward, her blue eyes focusing on Tarrant. “And who is this handsome man?”

  Ralph Tarrant laughed and introduced himself. What a floozy, Jerusha thought. Leave it to Sylvia to come on like gangbusters. Tarrant was staring at Sylvia’s cleavage, evidently liking what he saw. Across the table, Anne rolled her eyes. Pearl looked amused as she undraped her own bosom, folding the napkin she’d used to protect her costume.