Stuart Kaminsky - Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

“Big place,” I said.

“This is one of the guest houses,” my guide said.

He knocked and went in. A group of people were sitting around a blazing fire in a big central room. One of them, a beautiful blonde who I should have recognized from some picture, said Gable was either in the big house or at the pool.

My guide led me out. We went into a courtyard and faced a building that looked like my dreams of a Gothic castle.

We went in, stepping over an inlaid tile floor and into a room as high as a cathedral. No one was in the room, which held tapestries on each wall. The tapestries, six of them, were more than twenty feet high and a few feet more than that across. There were lounges around the room and a lot of chairs, but no people.

A woman in a dark uniform appeared from nowhere, and my guide whispered to her and disappeared the way he had come. The woman motioned to me, and I followed her to a dark wood paneled wall which concealed a door.

“Is Baron Frankenstein home?” I asked her softly.

She didn’t even acknowledge that I had spoken. We stepped into a high ceilinged room with cathedral-like windows and wooden church seats around the walls. A bunch of flags stuck out of the wall above. There was a long table stretching across the room with about thirty big, dark and ancient wooden chairs. We had walked out of Castle Frankenstein into a banquet set for The Crusades. Only one thing ruined the impression.

An old man in a dark suit sat at the center of the table. He had a hamburger in front of him and he was pouring a glob of Heinz ketchup on it. He didn’t look up as we passed.

“Servants get to use the main room before supper?” I whispered to the hurrying lady in front of me.

“That,” she said, “was Mr. Hearst. He’s having a snack before the main meal.”

I tried to turn back and get a look at the old man, but the woman was hurrying along in front of me. I never got a look at her face. We went outside, down a path, and then into a building.

It was the fanciest damn indoor pool I’ve ever seen. It must have been forty yards long and tiled from ceiling to pool bottom. The place radiated blue and was pleasantly warm. A few people were in the water. One of them inched his way toward me and pulled himself out of the pool.

It was Clark Gable. He picked up a towel and dried his hands as he stepped forward and smiled. He took my hand.

“Toby Peters, isn’t it? Good to meet you.”

“Good to meet you,” I said. He went to a bench against the wall, and I followed him as he continued to dry himself.

“Want to take a swim before we talk?” he asked. I said I didn’t swim.

“I don’t either,” he said, running the towel over his hair. “Not more than a few strokes. And this damn pool is over my head. There’s no shallow end. There’s an outdoor pool with a shallow end on the other side of the house, but it’s too cold tonight to go out.”

I tried to look sympathetic, and he gave me a wry smile I recognized. It was his Academy Award smile.

“You don’t think much of all this, do you, Peters?” he said, indicating that he meant the whole Hearst setup.

“Does it matter?” I said.

“Sure,” he said, working on his feet.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “I’m a two-buck private investigator with two suits and a one-room shack in Los Angeles. This man could buy a whole damn city.”

“Maybe more,” Gable added. “This is probably the most expensive toy anyone ever had. It’s filled with enough to stock ten museums. Hearst is a collector, of things and people.”

“And you’re one of them?” I asked.

“No,” he laughed. “Mostly, I’m a friend of a friend of Mr. Hearst. I’ve done some work with Marion Davies. She invited me up for the weekend. As rich as Mr. Hearst is, I don’t think he could afford me. He could have a few years ago, though. Now, would you like a drink, or do you want to talk here? I’m through here, and I’ll be getting dressed for dinner in a little while.”

I said I’d talk here. I tried not to watch the people diving in the pool from what looked like a marble balcony.

“Shoot,” said Gable with a wave of his hand.

“You saw two midgets arguing at the studio?”

“Right.” He said looking at me the way he looked at Thomas Mitchell in Gone With the Wind. “One of them is dead-murdered, I hear.”

“Yes. Did the police talk to you about that?”

“For a few minutes on the phone. I was on my way up here. They said they could get the details from Vic Fleming and another witness.”

“Did you see that other witness?” I asked. “A big, muscular guy?”

“Nope,” said Gable. “Just the two little fellas going at it. Vic wanted to hurry on so we didn’t see very much.”

“Describe what you did see.”

He described the costumes of the two little men and added that he and Fleming had been too far away to hear their words or tell me if either of them had an accent. “I do remember that the shorter of the two seemed to be getting the worst of it from the one in the uniform,” said Gable.

Gunther Wherthman had said one of the reasons Cash had hated him was that he was bigger than Cash. Now Gable was telling me that Cash was taller than the man he was arguing with.

“Wait, are you sure the Munchkin in uniform-the one with the feather in his hat and the yellow beard-was taller than the other one?” I asked slowly. “You said you weren’t very close.”

“He was taller,” said Gable confidently. “I may not be a great judge of character, but I’ll put money on my judgment of perspective.”

“You’d testify to that?” I asked.

“If it came to it,” he said. “Is it important?”

“You may have just saved the life of one tiny Swiss translator.”

“Glad to do it,” he beamed. “Say, how’d you like to stay for dinner and the movie? There’s a movie here every night in the theater.”

“He has a theater, too?” My eyes wandered around the pool house again, and to the beautiful swimmers in the water. I was definitely out of my league. “Thanks just the same,” I said, standing up, “but I’ve got to head back to L.A.”

He stood with me, shook my hand, and patted me on the back.

“Happy I could help, Peters,” he said. The towel was around his neck and he was gripping it in both hands. His dark hair fell over his brow. All he needed was Victor Fleming and a camera crew.

The uniformed woman without a face led me around the house instead of through it and back to the man who had met me at my car. She turned and walked away.

“Nice meeting you!” I shouted. The man in the dark suit took me right to my car door and tucked me in. He made no comment on the bullet holes. I said good-bye and drove down the road. It was dark and the sky was star-filled when I reached the gate and the two men who manned it. One stepped out and handed me my. 38. I said thanks and he said, “You’re welcome, sir.”

I headed back south for an hour or so and decided to stop at a diner. After I ate the spaghetti special, coffee and pie, I drove to a motor court to register. It reminded me of a clean version of my own place. It was called Happy Byways Motor Court, and Mrs. Happy Byways took my two bucks, gave me a receipt, and handed me the key to Bungalow Six, recently painted white. She was too fat to move and was covered with what looked like a blanket. I thanked her and went to Six after she sold me the Sunday L.A. Times.

The radio in the room didn’t work so I read the paper. King Doob was missing and Buck Rogers had to find him. Something was missing for me, too, but I didn’t know what it was. I decided to sleep on it. I had no razor or toothpaste so I just showered and went to bed. Happy Byways seemed safe enough, but I put my gun under my pillow just in case and propped a chair in front of the door. I felt confident enough to leave the light out in the bathroom. I think that confidence saved my life.