“No, darling, it was a program from TV.Unsolved Mysteries.I remember how Billy and I were drooling over the host, Robert Stack. We were laying bets on which of us could make him smile. I said—” She cut off at Troy’s look. “Anyway, I thought of trying to find the episode online, but that would take ages since I didn’t remember the name of anyone involved. I knew Billy and I had found it on a VHS tape in the Palm Room. But I checked and it wasn’t there, nor was it in the stash you’d taken to Billy. So where was that tape?”
She waited for an answer, but no one spoke. “I’ll have to apologize to Rachel when I see her, but the room she’s in now is the one I had when I stayed here the first time. I knew it had been beautifully redone but maybe there was some little cranny that had been missed, so I ransacked it.” Barbara’s eyes sparkled. “I had to climb on a chair but I found the old tape stuck at the back of a top shelf of the closet. It’s almost as though someone had hidden it there.” She gave them time to think about that.
With a flourish, Barbara withdrew a VHS tape from her bag. “Taaa-daaa. It’s an episode ofUnsolved Mysterieswith that delicious Robert Stack hosting. I met him once. He was—”
“Mother!” Troy said.
Barbara smiled. “I haven’t had time to see it, but I do vaguely remember Billy and I drinking too much wine while we watched it. Perhaps it’s just my intuition, but I believe the story you’ve been looking for came from this show.”
There was a hesitation of about three seconds, then the seven of them nearly stampeded up the stairs to the Palm Room. Troy, their resident electronics man, put the tape in the machine. They found seats on chair, couch, and floor, then settled back to watch.
Robert Stack, 1950s heartthrob, came on.
“See what I mean?” Barbara said about the handsome man.
“I do indeed,” Sara answered with enthusiasm.
When the first segment came on, the room was silent as they watched. There were some video reenactments that went on behind the announcer telling the story.
This is the unsolved murder of a young man who has become a cult idol, Taylor Caswell.
It was 1944, and young, handsome Taylor Caswell had made only one movie, prophetically calledOnly Once. While he was waiting for his movie to premier, Taylor lived in a cheap apartment in a two-story complex in Los Angeles. It was said that he kept to himself and befriended none of the other tenants.
When his movie was just a couple of months away from being released, a young woman who said she was his wife arrived. She told the landlord she hadn’t heard from her husband in over a week and would he please unlock the door. The landlord said the woman was so unattractive that he didn’t believe she was the wife of such a good-looking man as Taylor Caswell. Only after she showed him a wedding photo of the two of them did he agree to unlock the door.
To the man’s horror, they found the young actor lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He’d been stabbed in the heart.
The landlord immediately called the police. Later, he said that the wife did not seem surprised to find her husband dead, and while he was on the phone, she went into the bedroom. When she came out, he saw her putting what looked to be letters in her handbag.
All of it upset the landlord so much that he ran downstairs to his own apartment and downed a shot of whiskey. When he returned, the wife was gone. The landlord realized he didn’t know the woman’s name. In Los Angeles, the movie capital of the world, many people had made-up names. The wife probably had Taylor Caswell’s real name. Even though they searched, no one, not even the police, could find her.
For weeks, the police questioned people about the murder victim. The tenants said the only person they’d ever seen visiting the actor was a tall fair-skinned man. One tenant said, “He was like a blond Viking.” Another tenant said, “He seemed to like the Viking man more than any woman.” As befitted the time, this statement was ignored.
It wasn’t until later that the police found out that the week before Taylor Caswell’s movie came out, the wife had gone to her husband’s agent and presented documentation of a trust fund that she’d had set up. All profits from the movie were to be sent to the trust fund. People said that it was almost as though she foresaw that he was going to die since the papers had been drawn up months earlier. The agency’s lawyers laughed at her. The movie was barely D-list and it wasn’t expected to do well—which is why Taylor Caswell’s contract had given him generous rights to whatever profits there were. Those rights were given in lieu of the higher salary he should have received.
In the first year after the movie debuted, they were right. Few people saw it. But then critics began naming it as one of the hundred best films ever made. After that, the movie began to be discovered by the public. It became a cult hit. Today, it’s said that millions have been sent to that trust fund. Whoever that wife was, even though she was deemed “unattractive” by everyone, she ended up with very fat bank account.
As for Taylor Caswell, his murderer was never found.
Troy put the tape on Pause and they sat in silence. There was a publicity photo of the young, handsome Taylor Caswell frozen on the screen.
Sara gave Kate a look to tell her that they needed to talk. Sara wasn’t about to tell the others—the suspects—that Caswell was the man she’d seen in her dreams. He was Aran Lachlan, the son who’d run away from home and sent his parents into a deep depression. He went to Hollywood, changed his name, made a movie, then was murdered.
“That’s the man we saw in the movie.”
They turned to look toward the door and were startled to see young Quinn standing there.
He and Sara exchanged smiles. Kids and older people were alike in that they were not seen. “Is he from the movie you saw the first night?”
Quinn nodded.
“Where is that tape?” Jack asked.
Yet again, Quinn gave a look of being triumphant over the adults. He turned to Troy. “You took it out of the machine.”
Even though most of the old tapes had been sent to Billy, lying on the shelf was one with a worn label.Only Once. It had been in the machine since the first night. Troy hadn’t looked at the label when he removed it to put in the tape his mother had found.
Sara repressed laughter as Troy put the movie in the player. She got up from the ottoman and followed Quinn out of the room. They high-fived. “Well done!” she told the boy. “So where is everyone?”
