Chapter 19

July 31, 1996

Late Wednesday afternoon

Ahundred and twenty-degree heat made me think summer in Palm Springs was a lot like winter in Chicago: You stayed indoors, did your best not to go outside, and when you did it was just to run to and from your car. Scalding heat and frigid wind chill were distinctly different experiences, but the results were the same.

When we got into the Legend, I turned the car on and the air conditioning came right on, full blast. I touched the steering wheel and immediately pulled my hands back. It was scorching.

"I'm not going to be able to drive for a few minutes."

"Hold on," Ronnie said and jumped out of the car. I watched him go back into the hotel wondering what exactly he was doing.

While he was gone, I flipped through the radio channels until I got one that sounded local, giving a news report. Yes, it was a hundred and twenty-degrees, which was something of a record.

Then Ronnie was back, coming out of the hotel with a large plastic bag of ice. He got into the car and instead of handing it to me, placed it on top of the steering wheel.

"How are we going to find this place?" I asked while we waited. "Tramview Road."

"I could go back in and ask Bart?"

"No, it's fine. It's in north Palm Springs. It's not a big place. We should be able to find it."

"Okay. I'm up for sightseeing."

Once the steering wheel had cooled off a bit, we drove north on Palm Canyon until we reached the city limits. We turned east onto Gateway Drive and started zig zagging around. Fifteen minutes later, we hadn't found it. I would have rolled down the window and asked someone for directions, but there was no one around. Apparently, it wasn't a good idea to walk your dog when the pavement was melting.

"Should we find a gas station and ask?"

"Go a little further north," Ronnie suggested. "The tram is up that way." He pointed at one of the mountains above us.

"You've been here before?"

"Of course, I've been here before. You didn't think I was a virgin, did you?"

That gave me a very good idea what he'd done on his last trip. I would need to make sure I didn't disappoint in that department.

And then we found it. It was the very last street before the desert began again. Parts of Tramview Road had recently planted trees that were meant to cut the wind coming in off the desert, and they probably would sometime in the next century.

When we found Philburn's house there weren't any fledgling trees across the road just a pile of rocks. The brown house was flat-roofed with a metal box sitting on top like a cupola. It wasn't a cupola; I was fairly certain it was a swamp cooler. Something people bought when they couldn't afford central air-conditioning.

The yard was nearly dust, and the driveway was cracked and crumbling. A fence circled the property as though there was something to protect. We walked up the driveway to the front door. I knocked.

Sophia Hadley answered the door. She was about fifteen years older than I was, making her in her early sixties. She'd been the fantasy of a lot of the teenaged boys I'd grown up with. She'd spent much of the early sixties making movies that required her to wear a bikini. I'm not sure I ever saw her on screen fully dressed.

Ironically, or coincidentally, or something like that, she was wearing a bikini top, and a light shawl wrapped around her waist. Out of character for an actress her age, she looked exactly as old as she was. Which made me wonder if plastic surgery wasn't allowed outside of Los Angeles County.

"Yeah?"

"I'm looking for Wallace Philburn."

"Are you from the bank?"

"No, I'm not. I want to talk to him about his book, Canyon Girl."

"A fan? Jesus. He'll come in his pants."

She swung the door open, and we walked in as she called out, "Wally, you've got company."

The living room was filled with the cheesy kind of furniture you bought in a set after seeing an ad for it on the back page of the newspaper. A leg on the sofa had broken, making it sag in the middle. It looked sad and unhappy. The room was twenty degrees cooler than it was outside but by no means cool. It was also damp.

Wallace Philburn came down a hallway that probably led to several bedrooms. He wore a wife-beater and a pair of shorts that had once been slacks until they got cut off at the knees. On his feet were black socks and brown slippers. He was around seventy and looked every minute of it.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Manners Wally," Sophia said. "Don't cuss people out until you know why you're doing it."

"As I told you on the phone, Mr. Philburn, I'm investigating the Vera Korenko murder for the family of Patrick Gill. I'm Dom Reilly."

"Okay, yeah, I remember. I don't remember inviting you here."

Ignoring that part, I continued, "This is my partner, Ronnie Chen."

"Reilly and Chen. Sounds like a goddamn TV show. A pair of mismatched private eyes." He'd totally missed that I meant partner in another way. I glanced at Ronnie and saw the delight in his eyes. He'd love it if we were a TV show. Then Philburn added, "Not a successful TV show. One that would get canceled mid-season."

That dampened Ronnie's enthusiasm. Sophia asked, "You want some water? It's all we got. I'm not sure we've got any ice cubes left."

Ronnie and I said we were fine.

I said, "I want to ask you some questions about the people you interviewed for your book."

"Why do they want to dig all this up again?"

I explained Patrick's condition and what he'd been saying.

"It's distressed his sister quite a lot."

"Have you found any proof he did it? That he murdered Vera?" He asked excitedly. "You'll have to let me interview you. If you've found the murderer my publisher might put out a new edition of the book… with a brand-new final chapter."

Like an old-fashioned cartoon his eyeballs turned to dollar signs. I tried to let him down easy. "I haven't found the killer yet. But I'm hoping you can help with that."

"You're sure Gill didn't do it?"

"I'm sure."

"It would make sense. They went to great lengths to make sure I didn't mention any of the family in the book. Why else would they be so worried?"

"He's gay. So was Vera. Their engagement was a kind of misdirection."

He didn't look surprised. "Yes, well, that wasn't the story my publisher wanted, so that's not what I wrote. You see, Gill's family freaked out for nothing. I couldn't include him in the book. Not truthfully."

That seemed off. Patrick's sister didn't know he was gay. Did her husband?

"When they threatened to sue you, did it come up that he was gay?"

"No, of course not. People didn't talk about that then."

"Why didn't your publisher want you to tell the truth?" Ronnie asked. "Wouldn't that be the point of the book? The truth? If she was killed for being a lesbian?"

"The point of any book is to sell books. There had been a very popular book about the Black Dahlia a few years prior. That's what they wanted. The same story. Beautiful young girl comes to Hollywood to become a star and her dreams end in tragedy. It doesn't work if she's a lesbian and got what she deserved."

Knowing Ronnie, I placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him quiet. Philburn took it in, but continued, "The audience is women all over the country who thought about a life in Hollywood but were too scared to leave home. Stories like Elizabeth Short and Vera Korenko tell these girls they made the right decision. But for the grace of God… you know? They pay money for that."

"But you did interview people; you did actually investigate Vera's murder," I said.

"Of course, I did. Just because I gave my publisher what they wanted doesn't mean I don't have integrity."

Actually, it meant exactly that, but I had to let it pass. I asked, "I've heard that Vera liked straight women. Is that what you heard?"

"I did, yeah, but you see that made it even worse. Who wants to read a story about a predatory lesbian? Like I said, she got what she deserved, didn't she?"

This time, I let Ronnie off the leash. "She didn't deserve to be murdered. And so what if she liked straight girls? She didn't rape anyone."

"That we know of," Philburn said.

Before Ronnie could continue, I cleared my throat. The international code for shut the fuck up.

"Do you know the names of any of the women she chased after?" I asked.

"If I'd known you were coming, I would have gotten out my notes."

"If you'd known we were coming you'd have left town."

Sophia laughed. I hadn't realized she was still there. She said, "It's a hundred and twenty degrees, you don't think we'd leave town if we could afford to?"

She had a point.

"I've talked to Harper and Georgia Dawson. He says they weren't that friendly. But you wrote that they were very close. You even included a picture of them."

"People lie. Georgia gave me that picture. She was excited about being in the book. She said that Vera was one of the best friends she ever had. Maybe that didn't make her husband happy."

"Was he considered a suspect? You made it sound?—"

"You'd have to ask Detective Schmidt that question."

"He's dead. I can't ask him much of anything. When you talked to him, did you get the impression Harper Dawson was a suspect?"

"I did get that impression. But I got that impression about a lot of the people I asked about."

"Manny and Virginia Marker?"

"Manny Marker was a suspect for a while, but his wife gave him an alibi."

"What do you remember about Betty Brooks?"

"Now she was a predatory dyke. I was convinced it was her for a while."

"Your book says Vera was raped," Ronnie said. "That they found semen inside of her."

"Maybe Brooks found her having sex with a guy and killed her out of jealousy."

That seemed like a stretch. So far, I hadn't heard anything about Vera being in a relationship with Betty Brooks. I also hadn't heard anything about her being bisexual. It felt like the kind of overlay straight people put on things.

"Do you have any proof that Betty Brooks was in a relationship with Vera?" I asked. "Didn't you write she had a husband and three kids?"

"Yeah, I wouldn't say that was completely true. My editor added that because too many single women in the book made it sound like they were all lesbians."

"They were all lesbians," Ronnie said.

"Who was Betty Brooks really then?"

"She'd been married after the war until around fifty-two. Had a kid. Her ex-husband had two more by another woman that she raised for a while."

"So, you could defend what you wrote as an honest mistake."

"That's the nature of journalism."

"How do you know about the rape and the semen? Were you able to get access to Vera's autopsy?"

"Not exactly. Detective Schmidt told me about it."

"You didn't have access to any of the official files?"

"Only through Detective Schmidt."

"So, indirectly."

"That's the best I was able to do."

"In your investigation…" I nearly choked calling it that. "Did you run across the name Gigi?"

"No. Jesus, is this another lesbian? I blame the war, that's why there were so many of them."

"Oh Wally, you think the minute you leave the room women are eating pussy," his wife said.

"That's what I would do."

"You haven't eaten a pussy in decades."

Okay—that was a happy marriage. I had one more question. I asked it so we could get out of there.

"Tell me… Wally," I said. "Who do you think killed Vera?"

"You didn't read the end of my book, did you?"

"No, I haven't gotten there yet."

"Well, I don't want to spoil the surprise."