Death Was in the Picture Read Free

with pale eyes that flashed charm and wit and a chin strong enough to crack nuts. Then there was his voice. One magazine article had described it as molten lava over iced cream. It was rich and deep and powerful and it was the voice that had brought stardom, in the end, edging out other actors who hadn’t the vocal timbre to make the transition to talking pictures. Laird had. Laird did. And a million women, just like me, couldn’t get enough of watching and hearing him.
    I’d been to see one of his pictures just the week before. I couldn’t really afford the nickel but, as Dex had said, things had been a bit better lately and my paychecks had been coming to me regular for the last few months.
    After work, I hadn’t gone straight home to Bunker Hill. Instead I’d walked over to Broadway to the Million Dollar where I’d felt like a princess in the opulently ornamented theater.But even the pleasure in my surroundings faded away when the curtain opened on Laird Wyndham in
The Cardboard Heart.
It hadn’t been possible for me to think about anything but what was on that screen.
    I’d wept at the end of the film, when Laird had taken Catherine Calderón, his beautiful smoky-eyed co-star, into his arms and said, “None of that means anything, sweetheart. This fire I feel couldn’t burn me, even if all I had was a cardboard heart.” Then he’d clenched her even more tightly and kissed her hard on the mouth. As the music swelled and the camera pulled back, you could see that, as they kissed, the empty place between their chins and their chests together outlined the form of a heart. I’d rummaged in my handbag until I felt my hankie, then I dabbed at my eyes and nose, trying to repair any damage before it really got hold.
    As the house lights came up, I’d sat alone and snuffled and sighed and wondered what it would mean to have a man want you the way Laird’s character had wanted Catherine’s. To feel all of what they’d felt.
    Dex read my face and my body language. “So you’ve heard of him? OK, the guy that was here, Dean? He wants me to follow Wyndham. And report on what’s what.”
    “What’s what with what?” I asked, not understanding.
    Dex sighed heavily before answering. “That’s the thing, Kitty. The part where this gets sticky. Dean says the people he works for feel that Wyndham’s morals are in question.” He could see me get ready to interject, and he held up a steadying hand. “They want me to tail him, then report back on what he does.”
    I didn’t say anything for a moment. I needed to think things through. It felt as though there was a part missing. Then I realized: generally, someone wants someone followed, there’s a deep personal interest. A spouse, as I said before. Or a business partner. A father. Or a son. A husband. Maybe a wife. I didn’t see the personal connection here and I said as much to Dex.
    “So Dean wants you to keep an eye on Wyndham? Who are they to each other?”
    “That’s the thing, Kitty. The thing with this business that doesn’t sit right with me. See, Dean is doing the hiring, but he’s working for someone else. He wouldn’t say who. Just ‘a group of concerned citizens’ was all he’d tell me.”
    “That doesn’t mean much, does it?”
    Dex shrugged. “Maybe yes. Maybe no. I mean, a ‘group of concerned citizens’ and they’re concerned about what Wyndham does in private, that’s why they want me to get a slant on him. They think a big, fat star like him hasta be above reproach, morally.”
    “That’s what he said, Dean? ‘Above reproach morally’?” I could see Dex was quoting.
    He nodded. “Yeah. They figure—I dunno—maybe he’s a wrong number, you know? Maybe gonna get in dutch for something and, if that happened, it would turn everyone who’d ever watched his movies into trouble boys and roundheels, I guess, ‘cause he said something about ‘the morals of our youth,’ and how decent people shouldn’t oughta hafta put up with