“Beverley.”
She flinches at his sudden change of tone.
“No,” he warns, his body stiffening. “Leave it alone. You’ll be interfering with an investigation. Tell me you’re not going to take this any further.”
She drops her eyes to the floor. “Sure, Roger,” she replies evenly, shrugging off his arm and crossing to the window. “I don’t know what came over me.” She moves the curtain slightly to the side and gazes at the dark, neat street. Then she allows the fabric to fall. Something has its hooks in her, she knows, and she has no intention of letting it go.
Eleven
“Daiquiri, miss?”
Margot takes a coupe from the tray, puts the glass to her lips and allows her eyes to roam the party.
She, Bev and Elsie now seem to be spending a lot of their time mulling over unsolved murders, but that doesn’t mean she has to sit at home getting depressed. She can get out and put an ear to the ground, get the latest gossip from the area. That’s why the three of them make such a good team. She smiles to herself at the oddness of it—clever Elsie with her brainteasers and her unfashionable clothes; Beverley with her model looks and that baby-deer way about her. It’s an unusual arrangement, but together, they should not be underestimated.
Friendship was a peculiar concept for Margot before she met Bev and Elsie. Friends had always been a temporary distraction for her—glamorous, transient people who kissed cheeks in wafts of Chanel, then gossiped behind one another’s backs—but Bev and Elsie had taught her that friendshipactuallymeant that people were forced tolisten to your thoughts and opinions and weren’t allowed to judge you for them. She rather liked that. That’s why, when they were together, they never had to fake the smiles, plaster over the cracks, add a little sweetness to their stories.
She casts her eyes around the party again. Yes,thisis what she can do to help—see what makes people tick when they’re relaxed, off guard. What would anyone learn about the human psyche by staying in and watchingThe Danny Kaye Showanyway? This is psychology in motion, just with pot and Vesper martinis.
Music blares around the Hollywood Hills. Cute girls in rainbow sequins and men with studio connections move their bodies to the Temptations. Above them all, the moon shines like a huge, buffed pearl. Margot can see it reflected on the surface of the pool, until someone cannonballs in and the disk shatters. She suddenly stumbles. The heel of one of her vintage Hélène Arpels feels loose. She perches on the side of a lounger and gives it a wiggle. She should never have worn them, really; they’re on their last legs, but they’re her only shoes that go with her gold Oleg Cassini dress.
Mark, the young actor she is seeing, is somewhere inside, trying to get a meet with Mason Clarke. Rumor has it, the movie director tends to station himself near the lavatory at parties like this, no doubt so that he doesn’t have to walk far to snort his drugs off the toilet tank. She pictures a line of hard-chested, bronzed men with Elvis haircuts and space-eyed girls in silver jumpsuits hanging on his every word.
“Margot?”
She is jarred back to the terrace, the pool, her goddamn broken heel.
The girl looking down at her is smiling and chewing bubble gum. She wears go-go boots and a minidress the color of fresh milk.Dangling mirror ball earrings hang from her lobes and she has individual lashes painted under her eyes.
“Oh my gosh, hello, you.” Margot knows she knows her name but also knows she cannot for the life of her remember it. They used to party together—that must be it—but she wasn’t the girlfriend of one of Stephen’s colleagues. Was she an actress? A model?
“How have you been?” The girl takes a seat next to Margot on the lounger. She smells of blue raspberry and curaçao.Diana? Delilah?“Are you still at Arnold’s?”
Margot winces inside. She knows people see her job at the department store as a fall from grace. From a politician’s wife to a shopgirl. Sure, this isn’t exactly how she imagined her life would turn out. It isn’t convertibles gliding down the Sunset Strip; it isn’t Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, or a huge house in the Bird Streets with views of the canyon. But it’s okay. At least she’s out there, making a living. Does Diana or Delilah have a job? Probably not. She probably has some rich older guy, just like Stephen, taking care of everything.
“For my sins,” Margot replies.
“I bet you get to try on all the clothes, though, right?” The woman’s eyes flash hungrily.
Margot humors her with a smile.
“You here with someone?”
“Mark,” Margot replies.
The girl raises an eyebrow.
“He’s an actor.” They share a knowing smirk. “About ten years too young for me, but he looks extremely fine in a suit.” Margot gestures with her glass at the open double doors. “He’s currently on the hunt for Mason Clarke.”
“Ugh.” The girl opens her handbag, rifles past blister packs of Enovid to pull out a rolled joint. Margot took the same birth controlpills for a while but stopped when she realized she’d spent ten days straight watchingI Dream of Jeanniewith unwashed hair.
“If he finds him, tell him to keep his wits about him.” She sparks up the joint, takes a toke. As she stuffs the lighter back into her bag, Margot glimpses a bunch of lipsticks in there, too. That’s when she realizes who it is. Barbie Cook. A makeup artist with the studios. A woman who knows more about Gregory Peck’s T-zone than his own wife.
“What do you mean?”
The girl offers her a puff, but Margot raises a hand to decline.
“Clarke. Haven’t you heard the rumors? That guy’s really some monster.”
