moment, I said, “I don’t mind at all. This is fine.”
“Count it.”
“Cases such as this are based on trust.” I picked the stacks of bills up and forced them into various pockets. I probably looked like I was wearing bad stunt padding. Do you have ten grand in c-notes in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me? Mae West cooed inside my head. “I’ll send over an agreement for you to sign tomorrow.”
“Can’t we operate through a verbal agreement?” she asked.
“A signed contract is standard procedure,” I told her. “Sometimes people refuse to pay the investigator if they don’t like the results of the investigation, so this is protection against that.”
“But I’ve already paid you.”
“All right, I’ll send over a receipt for the cash, then.”
“I would really rather prefer no paperwork of any kind, unless it’s required by law.”
“No, no, the law doesn’t really have an opinion about it—”
“Then it’s settled.”
Why was she so resistant to having a paper trail? Well, I would worry about that later. Lots later. I had ten-thousand of her dollars already in my pockets, and I didn’t want to push so hard that she would think better of the deal and ask for it back.
“Do you need anything else, or do you have enough to get started?” she asked.
“I’ll need the names of any of the women you suspect might have sent that letter. Oh, and I’d like to see the letter, too.”
“I have it locked away upstairs in my bedroom,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave it anywhere the boys might see it. I’ll go get it. Stay here.”
She left the room and I heard soft footfalls on a staircase. In less than a minute, they returned, this time coming back down. Nora’s eyes darted around the room as she walked in, as though making certain the boys had not come in while she was gone. Once satisfied, she came over and handed me a piece of paper. It was plain typing paper on which was written in Sharpie:
TO NORA FROST.…
EITHER KEEP THOSE KIDS OF YOURS OUT OF AUDITIONS OR I WILL. THIS IS NO JOKE! I HAVE HAD IT WITH TAYLOR AND BURTON GETTING ALL THE ATTENTION! UNLESS YOU WANT THEM TAKEN AND CUT UP INTO PIECES, YOU WILL RETIRE THEM FROM THE BUSINESS. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.
“Did this come in an envelope?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No, I threw it away.”
I sighed. Doesn’t anybody watch cop shows on television anymore? “Could it still be in the trash somewhere?”
“Trash pick-up was this morning. Did I do something wrong?”
“There is a lot the envelope could have told us. Its postmark could have identified the location of the sender.”
“It didn’t come in the mail,” she said. “It was slipped under the door.” She began pacing again. “That’s what’s so terrifying about it. Whoever sent it already knows where we live. But you said the letter itself might have fingerprints on it.”
“There probably are, but the problem with fingerprints is that unless the suspect has a record, or was once in the military, or has a government job, there would be nothing to match them up against. But I’ll see what I can deduce from this letter. Can I take it with me?”
She nodded.
“How soon can I get that list of people who might be responsible for this?”
“It will take me a little bit to put it together. How can I get it to you?”
“Email works,” I said, reaching for my wallet and pulling out a business card. Taking a pen from my shirt pocket, I jotted my new email on the back of the card. One of these days I would have to get cards reprinted to include all the pertinent information, but I still had a box of the old ones, and I hated to see them go to waste. “The sooner the better.”
“Tomorrow morning. Is there anything else you need from me?”
The question was asked with a pregnancy of tone that I did not really want to contemplate at the moment. So I settled for a legitimate question. “What do you do, Nora?”
“Do?”
“For a living. I’m looking around at all these photos and oil paintings and photographic cutouts, and you clearly paid for that photo shoot today, and you’ve just handed me ten-thousand dollars in cash, not to mention this house, so you clearly have money. I’m just curious what you do to get it.”
“Well, I and the boys receive a military pension from my late husband, but.…”
“But?”
“I am what you would call independently wealthy through an inheritance. My parents were quite well off. Will that suffice, or do you need to know who they were?”
“Well, I think—”
“Have you ever heard of Steve Cousins and Natalie Strange?”
Had I? “Are you kidding? I loved Steve Cousins!” I said.
She looked at me curiously. “I trust you’re not speaking literally.”
I knew what she meant. Steve Cousins was an actor of the 1950s and beyond, and the epitome of what used to be called a light leading man. He had style and charisma to spare, if not outstanding talent, but he reliably got the job done while the Paul Newmans and Richard Burtons were getting all the attention. His biggest claim to fame was a 1960s television series called Luger about a private eye named Steve Luger, since television was never interested in a private eye named Bob Schwartz. Cousins died, to the best of my recollection, about ten years ago. It was a long-standing rumor that he was gay and that his marriage to actress Natalie Strange, who had been a starlet at Universal in the 1950s, and then later enjoyed a career renaissance on Broadway in the 1970s, had been one of convenience, since she was suspected of being a lesbian. They were the ultimate lavender couple, insiders hinted. But despite all that, the two were also known as the happiest couple in Hollywood because, it was said, they had a wide-open marriage in which neither had to worry about infidelity, since it was already a given. In the 1980s they turned up on shows such as The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, and even in late life were depicted as the ideal couple.
“What I mean,” I said, “is that I love Steve Cousins’ work. You’re Steve and Natalie’s daughter?”
“Their adopted daughter. Mother died six years ago, and Dad a few years prior to that. I’m the sole beneficiary of their estate, which was considerable. In addition to acting, my father was a rather astute businessman. He had real estate holdings on the side.”
“Wow,” I said, suddenly feeling like I had gained insight into Nora Frost. She had been raised by movie stars, and even though they were second tier movie stars, she felt she had to live up to the attention and glamour
