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Vol. 5, No. 19 |
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THE LEGENDS DIE  |
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
"That was a fine piece on Esther Templeton," Garvey said over the phone from New York. "Mom says you really captured Esther, made her come alive on the page. She said it really took her back to the Esther she knew in the old days."
"Your mom knew Esther Templeton? I didn't know that."
"You mean I never told you about them?" said Garvey. "Sure, they did a season of summer stock out in Santa Barbara in the thirties. They actually ran around together in those days. Then Mom got married and lost the acting bug. Esther kept at it and the rest is history. They kept in touch all through the years. In fact, Mom got a Christmas card from Esther just last year. As I recall, she was feeling pretty chipper for 87."
"I'll be damned," I said. "I guess I should have called your Mom for some quotes, right?"
"Oh, no," said Garvey. "Your piece was fine as is. Just one thing, though..."
God, I hated it when Garvey said "just one thing." He was like Columbo. He always had "just" that one more thing to ask. Next thing you knew, your whole story was coming apart because of that "one thing." But Garvey wasn't a picky editor. He was usually right when he asked you for one more thing, as painful as it might become. So I told him to let me have it and he did.
"You said the coroner's office thought she died of a drug overdose. So how long had she been taking drugs?"
"I don't know. She wasn't a recreational drug user, but she walked with a cane, so I guess I figured it was a morphine-derived prescription pain killer of some kind. The tox reports still aren't in."
"Well, that bothers me," said Garvey, "Mom asked me how she died and I told her. So then she tells me somebody's crazy out there in Hollywood. She says Esther hated taking anything. She had an arthritic hip, but wouldn't take anything stronger than aspirin for the pain. Mom said they practically had to hogtie her to get her to take pills to lower her blood pressure."
Well, I wasn't going to argue with Garvey, but I figured his mother must be in her late eighties, too, and maybe wasn't all that swift when it came to remembering things. For that matter, the late Esther Templeton was a retired movie star and, over the years, had surely told so many different stories about her life that she probably couldn't tell truth from press release by the time she was fifty. But, like I said, I wasn't going to argue with Garvey. Wouldn't do any good anyway.
"I'll check it out," I told him. And so ended my daily chat with my editor about what I was going to do for Investigative Features, Inc. for the rest of the week.
My name is Jeff Turner. If you're not a show business geek, you've probably never heard of me, although chances are you've read something I've written. For the past five years, I've been working a rare sort of assignment. I'm a syndicated columnist for IF, Inc. My primary job is digging below the glittering surface of show business for the real stories hidden underneath. It may mean uncovering a production company merger that went sour or maybe looking into the criminal record of some pederast who makes kid shows for television. I worked the Robert Blake story alongside the real police reporters, not the gossip columnists. I'm not a tabloid reporter, though some of my stories have sent the tabs into a frenzy. I write for a syndicate that serves the very biggest and best papers in North America, Europe and Australia. They want well-researched, hard-hitting, meaningful stories about the business of entertainment and the famous people involved in it. When I get onto something good, the information piles up so fast that it sometimes leads to a book. In fact, I've written three in the past five years, based on stories I worked.
For all that, though, I guess the thing I do that the papers like best are my "appreciations" of famous stars, directors or other Hollywood personalities when they die. I've been around L.A. all my adult life and, in my days as a Hollywood entertainment reporter, I interviewed hundreds upon hundreds of stars. So when a legend like Esther Templeton passes, the piece I write is going to be loaded with personal stuff about the real person. Sometimes it's the stuff I could never get in the paper while they were alive.
In Esther's case, there were no naughty stories to tell. She was a grand old lady everybody loved. She worked into her late seventies, mostly doing movies for television by then. When she came on a set in those last few years, the old-timers would line up to give her a hug and welcome her back. She always had time for the gaffers, the prop guys, the stage hands, the script girls, even the security guards. She ate her lunch on the set or at a picnic table with the crew. If they gave her a trailer for a dressing room, out of respect for her glory years, she never set foot in it.
I hadn't seen her in maybe ten years when she died in her bungalow at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills. When I remembered back to the time I saw her last, I had to grin. The old gal called me over to the canvas director's chair they always had for her on the set--with her nickname, "Toots," printed on it--and said, "I wanna tell you about my sex life, Kid." (She always called me "Kid," even though I was in my late forties by then.) Instinctively, I hauled out the skinny notebook I always lugged around. Then she fixed me with a "come up and see me" look, but couldn't hold it very long. She burst out laughing, saying, "I DO wanna tell you, Kid, but damned if I can remember any of it. Maybe next time."
I'm glad that was my last memory of her. She was a scamp, always known for her stunts and her pranks on film locations. She had graciously accepted the fact she wasn't a leading lady anymore and worked hard to become a fine character actress. She always took good care of herself and was still slim and attractive when she died. I didn't know anything about her health, but now that Garvey had raised the issue, it didn't seem sensible that a lady who watched her health as closely as Esther did would be taking drugs for any reason. So that afternoon I called my pal Pete Grover at the L.A. County Coroner's office and asked him about the drugs. He promised to call me back before he left for the day. The call came a little before 6.
"We can't go public on this quite yet, Jeff," he said, "but your editor was right. The Templeton woman was not prescribed anything that contained morphine, which is what we think killed her. It's not my case, but we apparently don't know where the morphine came from because the bottle had no label. We found no prescription forms or drug store receipts in her files--nor any medication that didn't belong there."
"You think somebody brought the drug, gave her an overdose and killed her, Pete?"
"What does it sound like to you?" he said. "You don't give yourself a shot of morphine by mistake. And it looks as if someone shot her full of a whole bottle of the stuff. Suicide doesn't figure either. There was no note and, besides, everybody tells us she was always having a grand old time with her pals out there, taking bus tours here and there and living the good life--or at least as good a life as there is left to live when you're 87."
"But none of this
is official yet?"
"Not yet, but it won't be long," he said.
I thanked him and let him go home to his dinner. I knew better than to press Pete for more. I knew the drill anyway. If the coroner's report suggested foul play, the cops would be all over it by now. Wouldn't do me any good to call the Country Home, looking for more information. They were fed up with stories about "the retirement home where movie stars go to die" and were very tight about anything coming out of there. If the cops had sent in a forensic team, they wouldn't confirm that, let alone tell me anything about Esther's life there.
If somebody had forced Esther to take the drug, she would have fought against it. Pete would have told me if there were any signs of a struggle. That seemed to leave few possible scenarios. If some health practitioner had given her the injections, she might have put up with it, thinking it was a flu shot or something like that, I guess. But who would want to kill her anyway?
I shifted into my police reporter mode and started looking at it as a standard homicide investigation. Who would benefit from Esther's death? As far as I knew, she had outlived her only daughter and was survived only by a granddaughter who was about 30. What kind of relationship did they have? Would the granddaughter get Esther's estate? If so, how big was it?
Did she have any enemies with access to her bungalow? I'd need to know who she hung out with at the Country Home and those bus tours she took. Did she have many outside visitors? The Home wouldn't tell me, of course. I had a few phone numbers of other old-timers out there. I guess that would be my only shot. I could call some of them, find out if they knew her and go from there.
The following morning I emailed Garvey and brought him up to date. It was Wednesday and I had a column ready to go about a clash between two companies over remake rights to a TV series that had changed hands a few times. I only wrote twice a week, so that would hold me until Monday. I had time to dig a little. I checked my calendar. Nothing that couldn't be put off a week. I made the necessary calls. Then I called my contacts at the Country Home. None of them knew Esther very well. Damn.
Before I left for lunch, I made an appointment to see Esther's granddaughter that afternoon at 4. She lived in Studio City, not far from my place in Sherman Oaks. When I returned from lunch, I found a fax in my basket from my old pal Frank Dennison, who wrote about movies and TV for the Vancouver Sun. Like me, Frank loved the old-time stars. He collected obscure films from the 1930s and 40s and often had me buy still photos and other stuff for him at the shops on Hollywood Boulevard. His fax message lavishly praised my "appreciation" of Esther Templeton, which had run in the Toronto Star. He said his piece had run the same day. He said he had sent me a copy of his by express mail.
When I left for my afternoon appointment, I found Frank's express envelope on my doorstep. I ripped it open and started to read as I walked to the car. I stopped cold. Frank had interviewed Esther the week she died. His piece was subtitled: The Last Interview--Final Words of A Screen Legend. What a break for Frank! His was the last interview she ever gave. I didn't have time to get to the jump page, but what I read was first-rate. Frank was the best--and his piece was far better than mine. He had every phase of her long career nailed with fresh quotes from Esther herself. I couldn't wait to read the rest.
Then it hit me: Frank didn't drive. He always had to cab in and cab out for all his L.A. interviews. For that reason, it cost him a fortune to go out to Woodland Hills. If I knew Frank, he must have stayed there practically all day with Esther. He might know who she saw each day. Hell, she probably introduced him to everybody she knew at the Country Home. I'd call him as soon as I got back from the granddaughter's place and pump him for everything he'd seen that day. He had a great memory for detail. If he'd seen something relevant to her death, he'd remember it.
Colleen Davis, Esther's granddaughter, lived in a townhouse development just off Ventura Boulevard, not far from the old Republic Studios lot, which was now a TV production center. She was divorced and lived alone. I had no idea what she did for a living anymore, but she used to be a junior publicist at Spelling Productions. From the look of her now--and the tacky furniture--she might not be working anywhere.
We sat side by side on a sofa with rebellious springs and a layer of cat hair. A big grey cat rubbed against my leg. Colleen had been drinking from a coffee cup, watching TV, when I showed up. I noticed the cup had ice in it, which probably wasn't a good sign. She seemed a bit wobbly, but wasn't smashed.
"Grammy Esther didn't like me much," she told me when I asked how close they were. "She thought I was wasting my life. She was right, I guess. Sometimes I don't even know if I have a life, you know what I mean?"
I think I did, but I really didn't want to crawl into any dark holes with her right then. I asked her if she still visited her "grammy" just the same. She said she used to go once a week, but her car had been repossessed two months ago.
"Do you know what it's like living in L.A. without a car?" she whined. "If I tried to get out there on a bus or something, it'd take me the whole goddamn day. So, I just started calling her instead. Then one day she told me not to bother calling anymore. How do you like that?"
I didn't offer an opinion on that, but I did tell her maybe things would look up for her once her "grammy's" estate was settled. She actually laughed.
"That'll be the day," she said. "Grammy didn't have much left anyway, maybe a couple hundred thousand. Whatever's left, she made a point of telling me she was leaving it and all her possessions to UCLA for their film preservation fund. I guess that was her way of letting me know she was cutting me out of her will."
Colleen was in no hurry to get rid of me, but she didn't really have much of value to tell. She was soaking in a heavy load of her own misery. It was a sad situation, but not an uncommon one. It wasn't easy being the kid or grandkid of somebody famous. Lots of them turned out like Colleen--aimless and bitter, estranged from their famous relative. She didn't really know her "grammy" at all. Didn't know who her friends were, hadn't heard of any enemies. I kept waiting for her to ask me why I was so interested in Esther's friends and enemies. She gave no indication the cops had interviewed her as a potential murder suspect, even though she had the only motive I'd come up with so far: Anger at Esther for cutting her out of her estate.
"Ms. Davis," I finally asked, "How do you figure your grandmother died from an overdose of drugs? That bother you any?" I was looking for a reaction. There wasn't any.
"I guess she must have been taking something for her bad hip," she said. "She wasn't a doper, if that's what you're thinking."
On the way home, I sorted through my impressions of Colleen Davis. I didn't see her capable of killing her grandmother that way. I had sized her up as a woman who never gets around to planning for anything, let alone something as complex as a murder. But maybe she had a boy friend who pushed her into it.
After whipping up some eggs and toast for a hasty supper in the kitchen, I finished reading Frank's piece on Esther. It was beautifully written, but I found nothing in it to open any doors about what had happened to her. It was after seven, but Vancouver was in the same time zone, so I called Frank at home. He picked up right away.
"Boy, you got good play on Esther," I told him. "Front of the second section and a teaser from Page One. Not bad for an 87-year-old who lived a clean life and never won an Oscar."
"I know," he chuckled quietly. "And she wasn't even Canadian."
Frank was really a pretty witty guy, but he usually didn't get credit for it because he was so quiet about everything. He never asked questions at press conferences and never rocked any boats with studio or network executives. He kind of slinked around hallways, listening and looking. He was so obsequious that most people either ignored him or just never noticed him. He got by on his good rapport with the publicists, who loved it when he got huge play for his stories, which also were picked up by lots of smaller Canadian papers. The more ink a writer generates for the studio flacks, the more breaks he gets from them. And the stars loved him, too, because he was polite, knew their work inside and out, asked them only serious questions and made them look great in print.
"How much time did you get with her?" I asked.
"I got there at noon
and didn't leave until about seven," he said. His Canadian
accent made "about" come out as "a-boot."
He chuckled again, then added, "I think she wanted to ride
home in the taxi with me."
"Poor old dear," I said. "Maybe she suspected
this might be her last interview and just didn't want it to end."
He didn't say anything, so I decided to plunge right into my main reason for calling.
"Frank, the police are trying to account for this drug overdose deal," I began. "Nobody thinks she was suicidal, but they can't explain why she'd suddenly shoot herself full or morphine or whatever it was. Have you thought about that yourself?"
There was a pause, then he said, "Not really. While I was there, I saw a hypodermic kit and a bottle of medicine on her kitchen table. When I read how she died, I assumed that must have been what she used to kill herself. Isn't that what the police think?"
"I don't know what they think," I told him. "But I'm pretty sure they're trying to round up all the people who might have seen or talked with her the week before she died. Have they called you yet?"
"No," he said, rather abruptly, I thought. "How would they know about me? I don't think my story was printed anywhere in the States."
I told him they'd surely have her appointments calendar or the sign-in sheet for visitors at the Country Home and would find his name there. I assured him they'd be calling as soon as they stumbled across his name.
"That's crazy!" he said, suddenly very agitated. "What do they think happened to her anyway? She wasn't murdered, was she? That's not what you're saying, is it?"
Frank had gotten so worked up that I backed off. I knew he was easily intimidated by security guards and customs officers and traffic cops for some reason because, on past trips we'd taken on movie junkets, I'd seen him break out in a sweat if anybody like that ever pulled him over to ask even a harmless question. I guess some people just get freaked by authority. I once asked Alfred Hitchcock what scared the master of suspense and he quickly answered, "Policemen." Turns out his dad had him locked up for a few hours in the local jail when he misbehaved as a kid--and he'd had a paranoid fear of cops ever since. Frank must have a similar phobia.
We chatted a few minutes about some mutual friends, then I steered him back to Esther. He said they took one brief stroll around the grounds, but otherwise stayed in her bungalow the whole time. He said she introduced him to one lady on the walk--a former wardrobe girl who had worked on several of her pictures--but never said anything about who her friends were around the Country Home. When I realized I'd drawn him out as much as I could, I decided to let him go.
"I'm sorry I upset you earlier, Frank," I told him. "Look, I'll keep you up to date on what's going on with the investigation down here, but let me know if the cops should call you. I'm dying to know what they think happened. In the meantime, I just wanted to tell you what a great piece that was on Esther and to thank you for sending it down to me so quickly. And, Frank...if I hear they're issuing a warrant for your arrest, I'll be sure to let you know in time to pack your bags. O.K .?"
That finally produced a laugh from him and we parted in good spirits. After hanging up, though, I sat there staring at the phone for at least ten minutes, wondering what that was all about. I could have sworn I'd somehow panicked Frank Dennison.
The following morning, I called Pete Grover again and
got the name of the detective who was getting the medical reports
from the coroner's office. Grover read me the summary on the
preliminary report: No signs of trauma to the body. Fresh needle
marks (four) found on the skin surface on the inside of Esther's
left elbow and puncture wounds into the artery beneath the skin.
Hypodermic needle and empty bottle of what appeared to be a morphine-based
sedative found on sink next to medicine cabinet. Body found,
fully-clothed, on sofa in living room. Deceased was in generally
good health, taking only mild doses of medication for lowering
blood pressure and aspirin for arthritis. Apparent cause of death:
Lethal injections of morphine. Toxicology reports pending.
Then I called Adam Boynton, the detective assigned. I knew he'd give me nothing if I just asked for a briefing, so I gambled and proposed a swap of information. I had talked to someone who had spent seven hours with Esther the day before her body was discovered. I'd trade the name for his briefing on the case so far--with a promise that I'd hold anything he told me until he was free to release it officially.
"Gimme ten minutes," he barked and took my phone number. He called back in five, saying he'd checked me out with the department and was willing to go for the deal I'd proposed. He said he could be at my place in 45 minutes.
While I waited, I reflected on what I'd just done. I'd agreed to give up one of my best friends to the cops in return for possibly nothing of value. It bothered me, but I rationalized it this way: I had nothing to offer but Frank's name--and they were sure to come up with it anyway as soon as they checked Esther's calendar or the sign-in book at the Country Home. Besides, Frank was safe in Canada and could tell them to get lost if he really wanted to avoid talking to them. Anyway, they'd never consider Frank a suspect once they saw him. If ever there was a guy incapable of murder, it was Frank.
But was I lying to myself already to assuage my guilt? I'd tossed and turned all the night before, picturing Frank Dennison advancing toward me with a hypdermic in his hand. There was something about the way he'd panicked when I brought up the subject that I couldn't get out of my mind. Suddenly, I laughed out loud. It was absurd to think of Frank as a killer, for Christ's sake. He adored Esther. Why would he want to put her to sleep forever?
My eyes fell on the big tear sheet from the Vancouver Sun on my kitchen table. That was a major takeout on the old girl, all right. Boynton would want to take that with him. I pulled a manila folder from my file cabinet and put the clipping inside for him to take. Then, just because it was there, I pulled out another folder with maybe two dozen other clips Frank had sent me over the past four or five years. Like me, he got the biggest play for his "appreciations" of celebrities who had passed away. I shuffled them out onto the table. There was some impressive work there.
I don't know what made me do it, but I pulled one out of the pile and looked at it. It was Frank's piece on Desmond O'Connor, the distinguished Irish stage actor who came to America in the 1950s to reprise his London West End stage hit on Broadway and somehow wound up staying on. His stardom faded rapidly and he ended up doing a recurring role in ABC's Hollywood-based daytime soap, "General Hospital." Frank had written a classic "riches to rags" story about O'Connor's suicide and his tragic ending in a cheap hotel on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Then a line jumped out
at me: Frank had the last interview with O'Connor, just two
days before his body was found.
I shuffled through the pile again. This time the story was
about the notorious Frances Goode, the "B" movie actress
who had been a tabloid scandal queen after two of her leading
men got into a fist-fight over her in the lobby of the Century
Plaza Hotel. Her career had gone to pieces overnight and she
ended up being busted for soliciting on Hollywood Boulevard,
just another of the street's many whores. Frank had interviewed
her in the back seat of a taxi cab, then walked her up three
flights of stairs to her cheap apartment. She was found dead
there a week later--and Frank had the last interview she ever
gave!
I pawed my way through the pile of clips and found three more stars Frank had interviewed just days before their deaths. I lined the clips up in a row and looked at them together. All five listed "drug overdose" as the apparent cause of death. Add Esther's death to that group and you had six of six.
I looked at the datelines. Two of the deaths were in January, three in July. The last one, Esther's, was in September. When I first started running around with Frank, he came to L.A. twice a year--in January and July--for the TV networks' so-called "press tour," where they preview the fall and mid-season TV programs for critics and columnists. Frank stopped coming to those events a year ago when his paper cut his travel budget. After that, he came down just once a year for a week of private interviews. I knew his last trip was in September because that's when he did the Esther Templeton interview.
I couldn't believe what seemed to be forming in my mind. Could Frank have killed all those famous people himself? I mean, it was ridiculous.
Detective Boynton turned out to be a nice guy. He listened
to my account of my phone conversation with Frank Dennison, jotting
down notes, then looked through the clips. He took down the names
of the other dead celebrities, then put the clips in the folder
with the one about Esther. I told him about the coincidence of
the dates. He seemed deeply interested. Then he cleared his throat
and gave me the briefing that was his end of the deal.
"The hypo and the bottle were wiped clean," he said. "The whole place was wiped clean. There was no appointment calendar. Nobody signed in to see Miss Templeton in the 24 hours before she died. We found two people from neighboring bungalows who said they saw her talking to a man at the kitchen table when they passed by. We tried them both with an artist, but they couldn't come up with anything they both thought looked like the guy they'd seen."
"Try this on them," I said, pulling out one of the clips, which had Frank's picture in the column sig. "And check with the cab companies. Frank doesn't drive. If he was out there seven hours, you should be able to find a cabbie who'll remember that fare pretty clearly."
Still, because I couldn't imagine Frank as a murder suspect, I asked Boynton if anybody else had turned up as a suspect. He said no. I asked about the granddaughter and he sneered.
"Oh, I'm sure we'll see her on lots of booking sheets as time goes by," he said. "But she seems to be clean this time. She has an iron-clad alibi for the 24 hours surrounding her grandmother's death: She was at County, doing her time for a DUI conviction."
He confirmed what Colleen had told me: Esther's estate was down to $170,000 in a couple of investment accounts and her will gave it all to UCLA.
Before he thanked me and left, Boynton asked me what kind of guy Frank Dennison was. I told him that was the crazy part. I couldn't see him ever doing anything remotely like murder.
"He loved these people," I told him. "To him, they were legends. Why would he want to hurt the people he adored?"
The following day, Boynton called to say both the Country
Home witnesses had identified Frank from the column photo. They
also found the cabbie, who I.D.'d Frank's photo, too. Boynton
had saved the best for last.
"I ran a check on all the other dead actors," he said. "They all died of drug overdoses. Four of them tested for morphine. The babe who was hooking had heroin kits all over her room and was a known user, so they didn't even run a tox screen on her. But here's the nitty-gritty: The boys who worked that case came up with two good sets of prints. I don't think they ever pursued that line, though, because the case was never ruled a homicide. If those prints belong to your boy, I think we may have our man."
"Wait a minute," I said. "There's no dispute about Frank being with these people. I mean, he did the interviews. So finding his prints in Frances Goode's place doesn't prove anything, does it?"
"I'd say it might," said Boynton, showing a faint grin. "We found one set on the hypodermic needle somebody left sticking out of her arm."
On Saturday, Boynton called me at home to tell me they
found a couple of prints on the express mail envelope that contained
Frank's Esther Templeton clip. They matched the print on the
hypodermic from the Frances Goode crime scene. They'd checked
my prints through the Department of Motor Vehicles and identified
them as another set from the envelope.
"If nobody else touched that envelope after you got it and we can rule out the express mail delivery guy, we can start thinking seriously about Dennison for these deaths," Boynton said.
Boynton wanted to know when Frank was likely to be back in L.A. I couldn't tell him because I knew Frank wouldn't be linking his visit to the press tour or any other press event. That's when he told me he'd called Frank at the paper and told him they'd like to send somebody up to talk with him, print him and try to rule him out of the investigation into Esther's death. He said Frank refused point blank, saying, "I don't want anything to do with it." He said Frank seemed "highly agitated." Then Boynton asked me what it would take to get him down here in the next week or so. I'd been thinking about that already, so I told him: "An interview with Elizabeth Bryant."
Boynton grimaced. I think I instinctively knew why. The two-time Oscar winner had been a nuisance to every police jurisdiction in Los Angeles County. They were constantly called out for "emergencies" by the paranoid diva, whose pill-popping, drinking and long series of staged suicide attempts and other "health catastrophies" had driven them nuts for years.
But Frank worshipped Elizabeth Bryant. He owned every still photo, movie magazine, tabloid headline, poster and video that included her image. At an auction, he bought the nightgown she wore in "Heavy Fever" and paid nearly $25,000 for it. I wouldn't be surprised if he wore it to bed every night. He idolized her, even though her career was over and she was now nothing more than a 60-something daytime talk show guest. Try as he might over the years, he'd never come close to an interview with her.
I explained all this to Boynton and we came up with a plan: I'd call Frank and tell him I had a one-on-one interview scheduled with Liz Bryant, but was going to miss it because I had to fly to San Francisco for my niece's wedding. I'd also tell him Bryant's people wouldn't reschedule, but I could try to put him in as my replacement. He could even stay in my place while I was up north. Boynton would square it with Bryant's press agent in case Frank called there to confirm everything. We would set up the interview for a private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Boynton and other detectives would be waiting inside and would arrest Frank as soon as he showed up.
"I'm sick about this whole thing," I told Boynton. "This is my friend--a harmless guy as far as I'm concerned. If this doesn't pan out, I've just sold out a friend for a story."
"That's one way of looking at it," said Boynton. "Another way is to see him as a killer who's been showing you a false face for as long as you've known him."
My call to Frank went smoothly. He was eager to do the Bryant interview. I asked him how long it would take to get the paper's permission to make a special trip, but he said he'd take three vacation days and fly at his own expense.
"They'll reimburse me, if the story is as good as I know it's going to be," he gushed over the phone. "I can't thank you enough for this, Jeff. I'll make it up to you. I promise."
That didn't make me feel any better about what I was doing to him. Still, the deal was on and I just needed to stand back and let the cops take it from here. Boynton didn't want me anywhere near Frank when he arrived in L.A. He promised to call me as soon as Frank was booked as a homicide suspect.
As it turned out, he called me a bit sooner than that. The interview was set for three in the afternoon. Boynton called me at 4:30.
"Your boy never showed," he said. "He never boarded the flight. We called the Vancouver paper and they said he resigned last Friday. His home phone number was disconnected two days ago. He's gone, Jeff, flown. Did your guilty feelings finally get the best of you? Did you warn him off?"
"Of course, not," I said. "Why would I go to all this trouble, then pull out? I don't get it. I have no idea what tipped him off?"
Boynton didn't sound convinced. He probably never would be. I went out to dinner and couldn't get it off my mind. When I got home, there was a fax in my basket. It was faxed from a motel in Calgary, Ontario. It was from Frank. Here's what it said:
You blew it, Jeff. You forgot I met your niece, Karen, when she was visiting you in L.A. in 2002. I called her to congratulate her on her wedding, but her roommate answered and told me the truth: Karen's in New Orelans for the next two weeks and has no wedding plans.
Coming right after that policeman called me from L.A., wanting to question me about Esther's death, I smelled a rat. I smelled you, Jeff. You're the rat. But I guess I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't forgive you. You just wanted a big story. That's all I wanted, too.
You see, the paper isn't sending me anywhere these days because they're not really interested in me anymore. They're just like the networks. They're only interested in "demos." They want young readers. They want me talking to Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears and the Olsen twins. I guess I "skew old" on their demographic charts.
You only got to see the really big spreads they've given me for the real Hollywood legends, the ones all papers still play up. They bury everything else I write. It got so I couldn't come back from my trips empty-handed. So, I guess you could say I helped a few of our old friends along to Paradise. Believe me, Jeff, I made sure they all went peacefully. I watched to make sure they were comfortable to the last breath. Esther and I drank some sherry before the end and I gave her a sedative in hers. She never knew she was getting the shots. I cleaned up everything afterward, but I guess the sedative will show up in the toxicology report.
Oh, yes, Jeff, I'm confessing to you. I did Esther and a lot more. I sent a full list to this Boynton guy. I think you'll find it fascinating. I'm also sending him Esther's appointment book. And if you've been wondering why I didn't sign in at the front desk, the answer is I did. I just signed in to see Leo Malkin, the director. They never check to see if you really go where you say you're going. Remember that next time you go out there.
I did them all with morphine. I stole it from an AIDS hospice in West L.A. I went in to do an interview, saw it, put three bottles in my briefcase and just walked out with it. I kept it in a storage locker at the airport--my little murder vault. It's all gone now. I used the last of it on Esther, so, you see, my crime wave was going to be over anyhow.
I'm leaving you all my tapes and files and stuff, including my interview tapes from all my "victims." I hope you'll do something really special with it. My only regret is I won't be able to read your story about all this. As Robert Anderson wrote in 'Tea & Sympathy,': 'Years from now, when you (write) of this, please be kind.'
Your pal,
Frank, the man who watched the legends die. (nice line, go ahead and use it!)
Somehow I knew what I was going to find when I went online to check the Calgary newspaper the following day. Frank didn't make page one. There was a six-inch story on page 32, telling about the veteran Vancouver newspaper columnist and movie buff who had been found dead in a Calgary motel, an apparent suicide. I'm guessing he had a dab more of that morphine hidden away somewhere and finally used it. The cops found a woman's nightgown under his pillow, but probably never knew who it once belonged to or how much it was worth. In fact they didn't really know much of anything about Frank Dennison or why his name would be all over the media just 24 hours later, thanks to his old pal Jeff Turner.
©2004 by Ron Miller.
The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895
Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
teaches classes in mystery and related topics at Whatcom Community
College and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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