[Celebrity Murder Case 08] - The Mae West Murder Case Read online

  THE

  MAY WEST

  MURDER

  CASE

  BY

  GEORGE BAXT

  ST MARTIN'S PRESS

  NEW YORK

  THE MAE WEST MURDER CASE.

  Copyright © 1993 by George Baxt.

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

  Production Editor: David Stanford Burr

  Design: Basha Zapatka

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Baxt, George.

  The Mae West murder case / George Baxt.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-09864-2

  1. West, Mae—Fiction. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses—California—Los Angeles—Fiction. 3. Serial murders—California—Los Angeles—Fiction. 4. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3552.A8478M341993

  813’.54—dc20s93-20791

  CIP

  First Edition: December 1993

  for

  Margaret Longbrake

  ONE

  “IT WAS SO NICE HAVING YOU,” said the slightly tipsy hostess.

  “Honey, it was nice being had by you.” The voice was unmistakably familiar. Seductive, mocking, sinuously sincere.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to call a taxi?” she asked eagerly. “It’s terribly late.”

  “I don’t live too far from here, honey. I could use the walk. G’night, dear.”

  “Nighty night!” The hostess shut the door and slowly slumped onto the foyer floor, a very silly look on her very ordinary face.

  The full moon was playing peek-a-boo through the palm trees. Los Angeles is lousy with palm trees. The trees are hollow and inhabited by families of rats. Palm trees were imported to Hollywood and its environs some forty years earlier by a shrewd real estate developer. The lady slowly making her way home to her cottage on Highland Avenue in West Hollywood was also a shrewd operator. For her appearance at the party she’d collected one hundred dollars. She would have done it gratis just for the opportunity to try out the new material she’d been rehearsing for an upcoming cabaret appearance.

  Around her neck was draped a feather boa, artfully arranged. Her hands were each on an undulating hip. Softly she sang to herself, “Frankie and Johnny were lovers, oh yeah.”

  It was two in the morning. Highland Avenue was deserted. She knew every other street in town would be deserted. Most of the time in broad daylight they were deserted. Los Angeles was an automobile town. Public transport was a joke. Los Angeles was a joke. Without the movie studios, Hollywood would be a ghost town. The studios were on an upswing. The Great Depression was still worrying in this year of 1936, but the president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was doing a great job in trying to restore a healthy economy. She listened to his “Fireside Chats” religiously on the radio, and that charming voice of his enchanted and reassured her.

  Her handbag hung from her right wrist. It swayed back and forth like a pendulum. She reached the paved walk that led to her veranda. Damn. She could have sworn she’d left the veranda light on when she left for the party. She rummaged in her purse and found the front door key. She thought she heard a rustle of the tall hedges that lined the paved walk. She turned around and gasped.

  It was as though he had materialized from her imagination. He wore a black cape with a cowl that covered his head and obscured his face. His hands were outstretched and holding the ends of the cape, giving him the appearance of a grotesquely obscene bat.

  She wasn’t afraid. She was amused. All her life she’d dealt with men. It never occurred to her that one day she’d come up against one who was dangerous. He said nothing. He just stood there. A light breeze caused the outstretched cape to flap slightly.

  “What’s your pleasure?” She was bravely cheeky.

  He moved forward slowly. She wondered what would happen if she screamed. Her neighbors on the right were an elderly couple, and both were more than slightly deaf. Her neighbors on the left owned a bar and grill in downtown Hollywood, and she doubted if they were home yet. Patrol cars in the area were nonexistent.

  “Now listen, honey, if this is a practical joke, I don’t get the pernt.” She was amazed at how calmly she spoke. In a flash it occurred to her this might be her rotten ex-husband in disguise, here to rob her. She’d spoken to him earlier that evening and told him she was doing a private party. “Cut it out, Louis. You ain’t gettin’ a nickel.” The moon held his right hand briefly in the spotlight. She glimpsed the ring, that awful ring, the ring that was coming at her, a bat’s head with two protruding fangs. He swooped at her, pushing her to the ground. The fangs punctured her throat. His left hand moved quickly and she sighed as the knife blade entered her flesh and penetrated her heart. She stared at the sky with a look of astonishment. This was not the way she had planned to die. She had expected to live into her eighties and expire in her sleep from the excitement of one last gratifying sexual encounter.

  Even though life was leaving her, she shivered as she felt his mouth cover her wounded neck and lap at the blood seeping out, lapping like her greedy Pekingese when she put a saucer of chicken soup in front of it. Oh God, oh God, it feels so good. Dyin’ ain’t all that bad after all. What a way to go.

  The following morning, Penelope Granger was walking her mutt Wilhelmina, its pedigree one of infinite variety. It was shortly after seven A.M. and Penelope and Wilhelmina were having their usual disagreements. Wilhelmina would pull Penelope to a lamppost and Penelope would rudely jerk her back. “Not that one, Wilhelmina. I know you mutts leave each other messages when you pee, but that big mastiff does his there and I keep telling you he’s much too big for little you, and what’s more, he’s uncouth. He slobbers. How about this nice palm tree?” But Wilhelmina had a mind of her own. There was something interesting lying on the paved walk to her right, and she had every intention of investigating it. She lurched up the walk, pulling Penelope behind her. Caught by surprise, Penelope lost her grip on the mutt’s leash and almost fell forward onto the paving.

  “You rotten bitch!” Penelope yelled as she struggled to regain her balance.

  Wilhelmina was oblivious to the string of nasty epithets raining around her like a salvo of darts from a tribe of angry savages. She was sniffing a lovely perfume and contemplating grabbing in her mouth the feathered boa lying alongside the body even though it was stained with blood.

  Penelope Granger was momentarily frozen to the paved walk. A hand flew to her mouth. The body lay in a grotesque sprawl, eyes wide and staring but not seeing. Penelope was staring at a buxom blonde who had what used to be known as an hourglass figure. Her dress was more appropriate to the era of the Gay Nineties. Her handbag was beaded and cheap. Her neck was wounded and the blood had coagulated. Penelope went closer for a better look at the face. She knew this person. She adored her. She was so wicked. So funny. Always kidding herself and kidding her audience. Oh, my. It can’t be. She’s dead. She’s been murdered.

  Penelope opened her generous mouth and screamed, “Mae West is dead! Mae West’s been murdered! Help! Police! Somebody murdered Mae West!”

  “Of course it’s not Mae West,” said detective Herb Villon to his younger associate, Jim Mallory. “Nobody murders Mae West except some critics.”

  “You could fool me,” said Jim Mallory. “T
his one’s a perfect look-alike.”

  The detectives had learned from a middle-aged couple who said they owned a bar and grill that the victim’s name was Nedda Connolly. The couple were Ross and Audrey Ditmars. Audrey Ditmars told them, “She does Mae West impersonations for a living. She was pretty damned good too. Poor thing. She was booked to open in a couple of weeks at some crib in Santa Monica. It was tough getting the booking—there’s so much competition in Mae West impersonators.”

  “It’s easing up,” said Herb Villon with an edge to his voice. “She’s the third impersonator found murdered in the past four months.” The preceding two were males, Larry Hopkins and Danny Turallo. While examining the late Mrs. Connolly, the coroner told the detectives that the modus operandi was the same as the previous murders: puncture wounds above the jugular vein, a fatal knife wound to the heart.

  “It appears that somebody really doesn’t like Mae West impersonators,” said Villon to no one in particular.

  “Maybe it’s Mae West,” suggested Jim Mallory.

  Villon said, “Mae West kills people, but her weapon is her tongue. What has me worried, will these killings multiply?” He asked the Ditmars, “You didn’t hear her scream?”

  “We didn’t hear anything. We didn’t get home until after three this morning. We closed the bar at twelve as usual, sometimes earlier because it’s downtown and you know that place is a morgue after the movie houses empty out. Then we played poker with the bartender and a couple of the waiters. She must have died before we came home.”

  “What about the people who live in the house on the other side?”

  “Very old and very deaf and they go to bed very early,” Ross Ditmars told Villon.

  Villon wondered aloud, “How come their curiosity hasn’t brought them out here?”

  “Oh, they’re curious all right,” said Audrey. “They’re peeking out at us behind their blinds. They’re very timid. You can try talking to them but you won’t get anything. Not anything useful, I don’t think.”

  Jim Mallory had busied himself examining the hedges. “He hid behind these hedges. Look. Some twigs are broken.”

  “Any footprints?” asked Villon.

  “Smudged.”

  “Poor, poor Nedda,” said Audrey Ditmars. “What will become of her canary and her mutt?”

  “Lady, that’s the least of my worries. What about men? Did you notice any men in particular visiting her?”

  Audrey Ditmars drew herself up to her full five feet and said smartly, “We are not snoopers. I don’t park myself at the window to spy on my neighbors.”

  Ross Ditmars interjected, “There was that rat Louis.”

  “Who’s Louis?” persisted Villon.

  “Her ex.” said Audrey. “Small change. Poolroom hustler. Always after her for money. If you check our local precinct you’ll find she had him arrested a couple of times for trying to beat up on her.”

  “Sounds charming,” commented Villon.

  Audrey smiled a very small smile. “Oh, he was a winner, a real winner. Ross here”—indicating her husband—”worked him over once.”

  “That was a real pleasure,” said a beaming Ross.

  Villon said to Jim Mallory, “Give her place the usual working over. Get some boys here quick. I doubt if we’ll find anything of any importance, but tell them to go through the motions anyway.”

  Some reporters and photographers had arrived. While Villon told the reporters what little he knew, the photographers were directed to Penelope Granger and her faithful friend Wilhelmina, who had been sitting quietly on the porch steps waiting for Villon to dismiss them. Penelope was delighted to pose while telling the reporters how she and Wilhelmina had discovered the body.

  One reporter asked Villon, “Hey, Herb, you think you got a Jack the Ripper on the loose.7”

  “I doubt if it’s Jack the Ripper. But it’s somebody equally good. Real good.”

  Another reporter who was slightly intelligent said, “Them puncture marks on the neck. They coulda been made by, you know, fangs maybe? Like maybe it’s a vampire like Dracula?”

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it,” said Villon. “Well, boys, we all know there are lots of vampires in this town. And if they can’t sink their teeth into your neck, they’ll sink into something equally vulnerable.”

  Jim Mallory asked, “I wonder what Mae West thinks of these murders. Do you suppose they’re making her nervous?”

  Mae West’s apartment at the top of an all-white building in central West Hollywood covered the entire floor. It was beautifully furnished and decorated in white. She adored white. Her lovely skin was pure white. In dress, her preferences leaned to navy blue and other dark shades of blue, or black. Although she gave the illusion of height, she was actually surprisingly short of stature, barely an inch or two over five feet. To add to her illusion of height, she wore shoes cleverly constructed to add four or five inches to her five feet one or two. Only her few intimates recognized that because of this she had to amble about cautiously, moving one foot in front of the other very slowly and carefully so she wouldn’t fall flat on her face. It was this slow, careful look she so cleverly developed that caused her hips to sway, her body to move so lithely and supplely, and lo and behold, there emerged the world’s most notorious sex symbol.

  On this sunny morning, with the sun pouring into the all-white living room, the sex symbol reclined on the white couch chatting with a visitor. The visitor was Agnes Darwin, and where the room and its hostess was all bright and cheery, Agnes was all dark and gloomy. In contrast to Mae West, Agnes was angular and bony. A black turban obscured even blacker hair. Her eyes were almost hidden by lids heavy with black kohl, the eyes themselves a piercing green brown. She wore a long purple dress that reached to her ankles, hanging so loosely she looked shapeless. From her ears there dangled two unique earrings that she herself had designed, witches on broomsticks that looked decidedly menacing. Her long, dangerous-looking fingernails were polished in deep purple. Though her hostess disapproved, she smoked a Turkish cigarette in a long purple holder. One of Mae’s two black maids entered, rolling a tea cart that held carafes of tea, coffee, and cocoa. There were plates of assorted biscuits and clever little bite-size sandwiches of cucumber and butter. Mae explained to her guest, who commented on the sandwiches, “They’re an acquired taste, honey. I acquired them from an English lover back in New York in twenty-five or twenty-six. He was on the lam from Scotland Yard I later learned after I dumped him. Last I heard of him he was doin’ time on Devil’s Island, the old devil. Help yourself, Agnes.

  “Desdemona”—to the maid—”you do the honors. What’s your perzon, Agnes, tea, coffee, or cocoa?”

  “No gin?” The voice was baritone.

  “Now, you know I don’t keep no licker in my jernt. Maybe a little brandy for medicinal purposes, some beer for some of the boys. Drink killed my father, God rest his soul, and smokin’ that Turkish manoower is gonna kill you. Put that cigarette out, or I’ll choke to death. Tea for me, Desdemona. What’s Goneril up to?”

  “She’s preparing lunch.”

  Agnes indicated the tea cart. “So what’s this?”

  “Breakfast,” said Mae. “Actually, I’m expectin’ a couple of detectives.”

  Agnes’s eyes narrowed. “You’re in trouble?”

  “Me?” She smiled with her eyes twinkling. “Why, Agnes, one way or another, I’m always in trouble. But it’s the kind of trouble I enjoy. Y’know, back in twenty-six I did eight days in the pokey on Welfare Island ... that’s in the East River in New York in case your geography’s weak. I was sent up because of the play I wrote and starred in, Sex.” Agnes looked startled. “Sex was the name of the play. A bunch of bluenoses blew the whistle on me. So they arrested me and sent me up. I had a great time. Met some real great gals. Prostitutes, shoplifters, and oh yeah, one really funny gal who perzoned her husband and her three kids. She was plannin’ to write her memwahs. I don’t know if she ever did. Anyway, I’m digressin’.” />
  She sipped some tea, told Desdemona it was excellent, and sent her back to the kitchen to help Goneril prepare the lunch. “These here detectives are after the killer.”

  “What killer?”

  “The one knockin’ off my impersonators. They think it’s all a warm-up to knockin’ me off. I’ve been gettin’ weird phone calls. No conversation. Just heavy breathin’.” She was on her feet and pacing, irritated at the thought of impending death. “Nobody’s killin’ me. I got too many plans. I want to do grand opera, y’know, like I did in Goin’ to Town, singin’ Delilah.”

  “You called that singin’?” asked Agnes, who would never be known for subtlety.

  “Listen, you, you’re supposed to be a witch, not a bitch. Yeah, that was singin’ as far as I was concerned. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. My plans. Then I want to play Catherine the Great on Broadway. I got a whole new angle on her, not like Marlene did in that rotten picture of hers, The Scarlet Empress. Anyway, I’m sexier than Marlene.”

  “That’s open to discussion.” Agnes heard the door chimes playing “Frankie and Johnny,” the song Mae had performed with such brio in her second film, She Done Him Wrong.

  “That must be the detectives.” Mae hip-swayed her way to a white throne chair, settled into it, arranging her black hostess gown artfully. She sat upright with an insinuating smile, looking every inch a queen.

  Desdemona entered and spat the word “Fuzz.” Villon and Jim Mallory followed her into the room.

  Mae recognized Villon and her face lit up. “Why, Desdemona, this ain’t no ordinary fuzz. These are old buddies whose names I can’t remember.” Villon refreshed her memory. “That’s it, Villon like in Frances Villon who wrote poems, and Mallory like in Boots Mallory what’s married to Jimmy Cagney’s brother. Arrange yourselves near the tea trolley, boys, and have some refreshments. This here over here is my friend Agnes Darwin. You may have heard of her. She’s a genyoowine authentic witch. You might have noticed her broomstick parked in the hallway.” Agnes was annoyed and showed it. “I’m gettin’ myself interested in witchcraft because I’ve got some thoughts on playin’ one in the near future.” Jim Mallory was absorbed in studying the bizarre Agnes Darwin. Herb Villon was absorbed in the luscious forty-four-year-old Mae West. Although he didn’t actually know her exact age, he knew she was surely making inroads into middle age. West interpreted the look on Villon’s face correctly, wiggled insinuatingly, and said, “A dollar for your thoughts.”