Hollywood Secrets More of our entertaining serial

PART TWO: Who has done for easy-going movie star Gene? Mysterious Lottie and director Brandon team up to find out…

Hollywood, 1922 On a soundstage at Rex Copperman Studios, a man lay dead!

“I didn’t kill him!” Savannah Snow shrieked. The middle-aged actress’ bosom wobbled precariously where it bulged from her aggressively corseted Victorian saloon bar owner’s dress.

Clutching a Jack Russell under one arm, Savannah dabbed her eyes and gestured across the crowded set to where poisoned actor Gene Luck lay under a sheet.

A grim-faced police officer stood guard over the body and the table that still held the poisoned shot glass and a bottle.

“Gene and I were friends,” Savannah sobbed. “I loved him like a brother. Tell him, Pom Pom!” she implored her dog.

While the plain clothes detective Lieutenant Hogan questioned Savannah, Lottie Pepper watched from the side of the set. She wore tortoiseshell glasses, but her sight was as sharp as her suspicious mind.

Savannah’s hysteria looked convincing, but she was an actress. Lottie recalled the animated argument between Savannah and Gene that she’d stumbled into when she arrived at the studio.

“I gave him the drink.” Savannah pointed to the bottle. “But it’s a prop.

It was here before I came on set.”

“Who put the bottle on set?” Hogan turned to handsome young director Brandon Ford, wearing a silk-backed waistcoat, a natty blue-and-white polka dot bow tie and his trademark white straw boater with a wide blue band.

“Our props manager, Frankie Bianchi.” Brandon indicated a stocky man whose face instantly turned scarlet.

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Bianchi spluttered. “I put the bottle on the bar this morning – it’s cold tea. It’s been there all day. Anyone could have tampered with it!”

Lottie looked around the room full of extras dressed as cowboys and saloon girls, the film crew, stage hands and scenery makers. A barn-size door stood open to a studio car park drenched with Californian sun. It was currently guarded by a pair of uniformed police but, earlier in the day, a hundred or more people could have wandered through.

Inwardly, Lottie kicked herself. The poisoned bottle had been in full view all day and she hadn’t glanced at it once.

She’d had no reason to suspect it. But she was supposed to be keeping her eyes open, not mooning around like a schoolgirl.

Ever since she’d arrived almost the only thing she’d looked at was Brandon.

Now a good man had been murdered under her nose. She’d have to sharpen up. Why, oh why did Brandon have to stir such maddening feelings in her?

Hogan gazed around, presumably taking in the bewildering array of suspects. Lottie dipped her gaze. With so many cops around, she was already jumpy about bumping into one who recognised her.

On the way to Brandon’s office

“Well, they found the bottle of cyanide behind the bar,” said Brandon as he and Lottie strode beneath the swirling ceiling fans of a windowless dark-wood-panelled corridor in the studio’s office block. “If it has Savannah’s fingerprints on, we’ll know it was she who bumped off poor Gene.”

“Uh-uh.” Lottie shook her head. “Savannah was wearing gloves when she came on set. They‘re part of her costume.”

They’d reached a stairwell and Brandon eyed her with a mix of curiosity and admiration. “You ought to be a detective.”

“Oh, I just have an eye for detail!” Lottie laughed to hide her blush. “It must be my secretarial training.”

Brandon’s long, athletic legs took the stairs two at a time. Lottie followed as fast as she could in her straight, calf-length dark blue tartan skirt and matching short, flared jacket. Her wavy chestnut hair was pinned back beneath a navy blue hat. She wouldn’t normally wear such straightlaced clothes – let alone the specs – but she was supposed to be a typist assigned as Brandon’s assistant.

Brandon glanced up and down the corridor and said quietly, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Rex Copperman is behind it.”

“Why on earth would Mr Copperman murder his leading man?” Lottie hissed.

“Insurance, maybe? Gene was under contract for another five years. Rex could claim a lot of lost income – and that would get him out of a hole right now.”

“The studio is in financial trouble?” “And then some.” Brandon opened his office door. “That’s why Rex has me making these cheap, hokey Westerns. Rush ’em out for a quick buck.”

“Coffee?” Lottie headed for the copper electric kettle. “I bought Mayflower Pure Kona on the way to work.” She held up the tin, like a girl in an ad. “Wait ’til you taste the difference!”

“You’ll make someone a wonderful wife.” Brandon’s appreciative eyes made her warm all over.

“Say, did you ever see BirthOf America?” He perched on the edge of his desk and indicated one of the framed posters that lined the walls. Above a vividly painted montage of covered wagons and redcoats, Lottie saw the words DirectedbyBrandonFord.

“I can’t say I did,” she admitted. “Neither did anyone else,” Brandon said bitterly. “Columbus, Independence, the Civil War. One family, four hundred years of history. It was the most expensive picture ever made in this town – and its biggest-ever flop.”

“What happened?” Lottie asked gently. “I was too ambitious. It was ahead of its time. But I can see now where I went wrong!” His brilliant blue eyes gleamed and he became suddenly animated. “If someone would only give me another chance with a decent budget and a cast I could pick, I know I could make a picture that would turn Hollywood on its head!”

Lottie had no doubt that he could. The young director had so much talent, energy and passion that she reckoned he could do anything he set his mind to. As she locked eyes with his, her breath held in her throat, she wondered if she was in love.

“I just have an eye for detail!” Lottie laughed. “It must be my secretarial training…”

She jumped as the door banged open. A fog of acrid cigar smoke flooded the room. Through the cloud came the whale-like belly of the literally biggest movie magnate in Hollywood.

“Ah, Mr Ford, you’re back at last.”

The florid-faced Rex Copperman stirred the smoke with a cigar the size of a small burning tree trunk. “I’ve been looking at the books and we can’t afford to reshoot the scenes with poor Gene. You’ll have to write his demise into the movie. Change the story; he drinks himself to death.”

“What will we do in the rest of the picture?” Brandon protested. “There’s an hour left to fill.”

“You’re the writer,” Copperman declared. “Make something up.”

“Maybe you could make it more about Savannah’s character,” Lottie piped up. She’d taken some of Brandon’s old scripts home the previous evening and was getting a feel for the filmmaking process. “You could have her haunted by the death of the man she scorned until, consumed by guilt, she finally changes her ways and becomes a better person.”

Warming to her theme, she went on, “The final scene could see her at his grave. It would make the film almost a tribute to the real-life Gene Luck.”

Brandon and Copperman stared at her. “I told you she’d be a good assistant,” Copperman boomed. “Do as she said, Mr Ford, before you end up as her assistant!”

Lottie smiled smugly as Copperman’s enormous belly reversed from the room.

“Aren’t you the bright button?”

Brandon huffed when he’d gone. “One minute you’re identifying poisons, now you’re writing scripts. How did you know it was cyanide in Gene’s glass, anyway?”

“Oh, you know, the smell of almonds – not hard to miss in cold tea. Then there was the muscle tightening on Gene’s face – a classic symptom. Or so I’ve heard,” Lottie added, catching herself. “I used to read a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories.”

“You’re a mystery, Miss Pepper.” Brandon’s warm smile returned as he shook his head in admiration. “Hiding behind those glasses when I bet you could run this studio and solve Gene’s murder into the bargain.”

“I’m just the girl who makes the coffee!” Lottie laughed, embarrassed. Then, as she handed him a cup, she made a quick decision. “But I bet you and I could solve the case together.”

“You want to play amateur detectives?” Brandon laughed.

“It could be fun.” She stared provocatively into his eyes.

She wondered if the thought of working closely together on something secretive, thrilling and possibly dangerous that only the two of them would know about excited him as much as it did her.

“OK, you’ve convinced me,” he joked. “But how would we even begin?”

“You tell me about every accident, from the beginning,” Lottie said urgently. “For each we’ll work out who could have been involved and who definitely couldn’t…”

The next day, while Brandon rewrote the movie, Lottie put her ear to the studio grapevine…

The nicotine-stained canteen at the back of the office building was buzzing with shock and speculation. Waiting in line at the steamy food counter, Lottie found herself standing behind a man dressed as a cowboy and another as an Indian brave.

“Who would do such a thing to Gene Luck?” the cowpoke asked.

“I hope it wasn’t one of the caterers,” said his pal. “Or we’ll all be in trouble!”

The cowboy half lifted his freshly poured coffee to his lips, then paused and regarded it with suspicion.

“I can’t believe anything so shocking could happen,” Lottie piped up as she took a bologna sandwich from the glass case. “Did you know Mr Luck well?”

“Not personally.” The Stetson-wearer looked her up and down, surprised by her forwardness. “But Gene was an old pro we all looked up to. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word against him.”

The men moved off and Lottie looked around the canteen, tray in hand. Near a window overlooking the sandy back lot, she spotted a pair of well-groomed women in shiny beige tunics, like nurse’s uniforms, but streaked here and there with smudges of cosmetics. She bet that people relaxing in a make-up assistant’s chair let slip far more than under police interrogation.

Luckily, the women were dining at a table for six, the other chairs unoccupied.

“Pardon me, do you mind if I join you?” Lottie asked in a timid tone. “I’m new.”

“Please do.” The blonde woman smiled through the smoke rising from their shared ashtray. She offered a neatly manicured hand. “I’m Marilyn.”

“I’m Regina,” her companion supplied. “We work in the make-up department.”

“I’m Lottie. I just started as Brandon Ford’s assistant.”

“Well, lucky you,” said a voice. Lottie turned to see a raven-haired girl in office clothes with smoky eyeshadow.

Giggling, the girl said, “I’d assist him with a thing or two! Wouldn’t you, girls?”

“He can audition me for a love scene any day of the week,” Regina cackled.

Lottie bristled at their shamelessness, but quickly hid it. “He is rather dishy.”

She giggled, hoping that a spot of girly gossip would loosen their tongues.

“I’m Cynthia Wise.” The black-haired girl scraped her chair around to join their table. “I’m in the typing pool but I’m really an actress. I’d kill for a part in one of Brandon’s films!”

After a day’s sleuthing,

Lottie rejoined Brandon.

Brandon ripped a sheet of paper from his typewriter as Lottie entered the office.

“I think I have a workable storyline,” the director declared. “We can restart shooting tomorrow. Learn anything on the lot?”

Onlythateverywomaninthestudio hasthehotsforyou, Lottie thought – but she wasn’t going to tell him that. Perching one hip on the edge of his desk, she gratefully slipped the strap of her small but heavy purse from her shoulder.

“Everyone agrees Savannah resented sharing star billing with Gene, but we knew that,” she reported. “There is a rumour that she had eyes for him in their Broadway days, though. If he rejected her and she held a grudge that could give a motive.”

“But if you think the murderer was also behind the sabotage, that rules Savannah out,” said Brandon. “She wouldn’t have the strength to loosen the stagecoach wheel.”

“She wasn’t near the stagecoach that morning, either,” Lottie remembered. “But there could be more than one person.” She checked her watch, its face on the inside of her wrist. “Well, I’d better love you and leave you. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Say…” Lottie was halfway across the office when the sound of Brandon’s dry throat stopped her in her tracks. She turned back. The look on his face made her heart pound.

“Do you think I could buy you dinner tonight?” he ventured nervously.

There was nothing Lottie would like more – but why tonight?

“I’m sorry.” She wished she could tell him about her previous engagement. “I, um, have to stay in and wash my hair.” “Some other time, then,” he said. “Yeah.” She she hurried to the door. “Hey, don’t forget your purse,” Brandon called. “Whew, it’s heavy. What have you got in there – a gun?”

Brandon headed downtown alone…

Brandon stopped abruptly as a drunk man was tossed cart-wheeling from a doorway and collapsed in the gutter. Downtown Los Angeles was more like the Wild West than the back lot of Rex Copperman Studios, he reckoned.

Gaggles of young women in loose, gaily coloured dresses, bell-shaped cloche hats and waist-length strings of pearls thronged the sidewalks, smoking, swigging from hip-flasks and shrieking with laughter.

Open-top cars full of braying stags in tuxedos ploughed up and down a palm tree lined boulevard on their way to parties in the Hollywood Hills. The blades in the cars whistled and cat-called to the gals who yelled back just as provocatively.

Movie fans gawped as chauffeured Cadillac Phaetons delivered film stars to the canopied entrances of restaurants and hotels. From every brightly lit club and eaterie came the blasting horns and thumping beat of jazz.

So heady was the party atmosphere, fuelled with illicit booze from the speakeasies, that no one would have guessed Prohibition had ever happened.

This is what I should be filming, Brandon thought, these crazy times we’ re livingin–notmakingno-budgetWesterns with yesterday’ s Broadway stars.

Yet he felt unconnected to the wild scenes all around him. All he could think of was that Lottie should have been at his side, her lovely hand in his.

She intrigued him. There was so much going on behind those glasses of hers – she drove him quite mad with desire. When she brushed him off earlier, it had stung.

He turned to gaze into the window of a glittering restaurant full of well-dressed patrons. To his surprise, he saw Lieutenant Hogan, the cop investigating Gene’s murder, at a table deep into the room.

With the detective was a beautiful girl who – Brandon could hardly believe it! The girl having dinner with Hogan was Lottie!

Without her glasses, made up like a film star, she was almost unrecognisable. The chestnut hair normally pinned back so severely fell forward in a wavy bob. Her bare arms glowed in a silk spaghetti-strap evening dress and pearl choker. She looked incredible.

Brandon felt he was watching actors miming in a movie. He didn’t need dialogue; he saw how intently Hogan and Lottie were leaning towards each other. Why had she chosen Hogan over him?

“Mr Ford?”

He turned to see a smoky-eyed, raven-haired, ruby-lipped young woman with a garish silk scarf tied around her forehead. Her loose, thin, leopard print dress flapped in the evening breeze and a string of beads hung to her waist.

“I’m Cynthia Wise from the typing pool at the studio, but I’m an actress and such an admirer of your movies.” She giggled, a smoky cigarette holder in her gloved hand. “Say, I heard there’s a place around the corner that sells hooch. Would you care to buy me a drink?”

“Well, I guess I’m not doing anything else,” Brandon said weakly.

As he moved away with the girl, he didn’t see Lottie watching him, her brows knitted into a frown.

The blades in the cars cat-called to the gals who yelled back provocatively