Chapter Twenty-One
“This surprise you mentioned to us earlier,” Mort asked Howard, “the reason you told us to bring comfortable walking shoes, is it by any chance another stop on the magical mystery dining tour?”
“Not officially,” Howard said, “but Victoria and I hoped you’d enjoy this place. A few television shows have filmed there, but we mainly chose it because we thought Aunt Jess might appreciate its literary history.”
“Ooh, literary history,” Seth said. “That sounds a bit more highbrow than some of the places we’ve visited during the week. Not that I’m complaining.”
“Yes, we’ve enjoyed every place you’ve taken us,” Maureen said. “But if it’s so highbrow, why the comfortable walking shoes?”
“Because I actually made the reservations earlier in the week, thinking it would be a great location to celebrate your win, but I didn’t know we’d finish up so early.
We’ll have a couple of hours to kill before they open, and the restaurant is right on Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. ”
“Oh!” Maureen said. “I wanted to see that! I wonder if we’ll spot any celebrities.”
“I’m sure they’re all there,” Mort teased. “I hear they regularly go and just stand on the sidewalk next to their stars.”
Maureen punched him playfully in the arm.
“A planned celebration?” I asked Howard. “You were that confident we’d win?”
“Yes,” Howard said, “but if you didn’t, we figured a special meal might be a great consolation prize. Since it will be a while before dinner, Victoria packed some snacks for us in the cooler.”
“Fair enough.” Seth kicked off his dress shoes in favor of a pair of loafers.
Mort opened the cooler and pulled out bottles of water or soft drinks for everyone, and then some fruit and assorted meats and cheeses.
“There’s crackers in a bag next to the cooler,” Howard said. “Victoria didn’t want them to get soggy.”
“Ah.” Mort found the crackers and passed them around on their small, artfully arranged tray. “There’s napkins here too.”
I hadn’t realized I was hungry until the first bite, then I found myself ravenously devouring some lovely sharp cheddar and apple slices. “Sorry,” I said, reaching back for another.
“You go ahead,” Seth said. “You’ve been through an emotional wringer today. All the police action and then that last question.”
“What was up with that?” Mort asked.
“You know Jessica and Marjorie Ainsworth were friends, right?” Maureen asked.
“Know it?” Mort said. “Seth and I flew halfway across the globe to make sure Mrs. F. was all right.”
“That’s right.” I couldn’t help a smile. “As I recall, you arrived still wearing your sheriff’s uniform.”
“Oh no, Mort,” Maureen said. “Really?”
“He might have been taking his position a little more seriously than he should have,” Seth said.
“Maybe,” Mort said, “but it was for a good cause. Someone had just tried to kill Mrs. F., and that Scotland Yard inspector seemed intent on locking her up.” Mort laughed. “Before they eventually got close.”
“Here we go,” Howard called out. “Hollywood Boulevard. Would you like me to drop you?”
“Hmm,” Mort said, peering out the window, “maybe we should stick together. It looks a little seedy, doesn’t it?” I followed his line of sight and spotted a graffiti-speckled vacant building.
“It gets a little more upscale closer to the Chinese Theatre,” Howard said, “but I see what you mean.” He drove around a few minutes before finding a parking garage on a side street, and we all climbed out.
There was a bit more litter on the ground than in the pristine parking garage the studio maintained, and it smelled faintly of urine, the sad but ubiquitous odor of all major cities with an unhoused population.
We fell into a grouping, with Howard leading the way as our tour guide. Seth took my arm and we followed, while Mort held Maureen’s hand and took up the rear.
Once we turned onto Hollywood Boulevard, we quickly took to pointing out the stars of familiar celebrities whose names were ensconced on the Walk of Fame, often needing to raise our voices to be heard over the traffic, which included a disproportionate number of buses, of both the metro and tourist variety.
With the California sun and palm trees, it was easy to join the vacationing throng, with their sneakers and backpacks, taking cell-phone pictures of the stars belonging to their favorite actors and musicians, and I barely noticed the boarded-up storefronts taking up the space between the tattoo parlors, lingerie shops, smoke shops, and dispensaries.
We passed several well-known theaters—the Ford, the Pantages—and I convinced our little party to step into the lobbies, some modernized, and others a well-preserved bit of history.
Howard also pointed out the various landmarks visible from the boulevard, including a spectacular view of the Hollywood Sign in the hills, where he made us stand for a group selfie, and the iconic round tower that was once the Capitol Records Building.
“This is where we’re having dinner,” Howard said, as we passed the Musso & Frank Grill, but since it was still early, the entrances were barred.
He also led us down Las Palmas, past a mural of Frank Sinatra, to an Italian restaurant called Miceli’s.
“I’m thinking of putting this on my tour too,” he said.
“Loads of ambience. Red checkered tablecloths, ceiling dripping with old wine bottles, a waitstaff that occasionally breaks into song. It was used as a backdrop for gangsters in Mob City and Monk.” He leaned closer.
“And I learned that real mobsters used to hang out here. But so did celebrities: Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe. Even some politicians.”
“JFK?” Mort said.
“Why, yes,” Howard said. “How did you guess?”
Mort just winked in my direction. I suspect Marilyn’s presence at the eatery had given it away.
Once back on Hollywood Boulevard, Howard started paying closer attention to the names etched in the sidewalk, and he stopped and gestured down. “There she is! That’s our girl.”
There, in brass letters set into the terrazzo, was the name Danielle Gray.
“Let’s get a selfie to show her we stopped by,” he said, which turned out to be easier said than done without sitting on the sidewalk. Eventually, we managed to squat enough to get us and the actress’s star into one photo.
I found the exercise and the company rejuvenating and felt almost human by the time we reached the Chinese Theatre.
This area was more densely populated with tourists, and even a few street performers in costume frolicking about and posing for pictures.
The spicy aromas from food trucks filled the air, and pop-ups hawking various culinary delights, crafts, and artwork lined the sidewalk.
All the tension seemed to have drained from Mort’s face as he and Maureen stopped to match their hand and footprints to those cast in the concrete in front of the theater by Hollywood stars decades ago.
He did a double take at one square and called me over.
“Got another mystery for you, Mrs. F. This one says, ‘Sid, may you never die till I kill you.’ All caps. And it’s signed Humphrey Bogart. ”
“I wonder who Sid was,” Maureen said. “Maybe Sydney Greenstreet?”
Howard laughed. “That’s an old mystery, and easier to solve than the one you’ve been up against this week. Sid was the nickname of the guy who ran this theater at the time. There are a few other messages written to Sid, although they tend to be less…threatening.”
When we were done ogling all the names and prints, Howard ushered us into his favorite souvenir shop, where we quickly loaded up on gifts for the folks back in Cabot Cove.
We were a pleasantly fatigued group as we doubled back and found the bars had been lifted from the Musso & Frank Grill. The aromas of barbecued meat and mesquite hit us as soon as we entered.
“Oh, I don’t know about highbrow,” Seth said, “but I think I’m going to like it here.”
“Amen to that,” Mort said.
Howard could barely control his excitement.
“Right there,” he said, pointing to a red leather upholstered booth in clear view of the front entrance, “is where Marilyn Monroe used to sit. I asked if they could put us in the so-called new room. The Screenwriters Guild used to be located just across the street, and wait until I tell you who used to hang out here.”
He was interrupted as we were shown to a corner booth in the adjoining room. As we took turns sliding into the circular banquette, Victoria waved from a stool at the bar, which ran nearly along the whole wall.
She joined us at the table carrying a martini glass filled with olives in one hand and a small iced carafe in the other.
“I see someone has already gotten started,” Howard teased.
“I couldn’t help myself,” she said. “Their martinis are fabulous.”
“Best in America,” Howard said.
“Is that on a sign somewhere?” Mort asked.
“That’s what Esquire said,” Howard replied. “Stirred not shaken—no disrespect to James Bond—no vermouth and kept chilled right up until you drink it.”
“Sold,” Maureen said.
As the menus were distributed, Seth said, “And Jess, don’t you dare order just a salad.”
Mort and Seth hemmed and hawed over the extensive wine list, then chose to order a bottle of white and a bottle of red for the table, with Maureen tacking on a martini for herself and Howard requesting a soft drink, since he, after all, was also our driver.
“I’ll let you look at the menu,” Howard said, “and then I’ll tell you why they sometimes call this the writers’ room.”
I was a bit overwhelmed by the choices on the menu and by Seth’s and Mort’s enthusiasm to try almost everything on it.
Little Hollywood tidbits—such as the kidneys with bacon being Charlie Chaplin’s favorite and the fettucine Alfredo recipe being bribed from the original Alfredo in Italy and carried back to the restaurant by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford—added more fuel to the fire.
The only thing tempering their enthusiasm was the moment Seth started looking at the prices, after which he removed his glasses, wiped them on his napkin, then said, “Well, maybe we don’t want to spend all the prize money on one meal.”
Instead, they developed an elaborate plan to share entrées, so I just handed my menu back to Seth and said, “Can at least one of those be a salad?”
“We got you covered,” he said.
Once Seth and Mort had sent the red-jacketed server away with an order large enough to feed a small battalion, Howard gathered our attention for his tour-guide speech.
“Yes, the highbrow stuff,” Mort said. “Lay it on us.”
“I wish I could say it all took place right where we’re sitting,” Howard began, “but there used to be a back room they called the writers’ room.
It was leased space and no longer part of the restaurant, but later—I think it was in the fifties—they added this new room and moved the bar and most of the furnishings from that space in here.
That bar,” he said, pointing to the elaborately carved fixture, “has seen things. Hemingway. Faulkner. Fitzgerald. Dorothy Parker, when she was a screenwriter here. And both Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.”
Mort whistled. “That’s a lot of booze.”
I looked over at the bar and tried to imagine it, the lively conversation, the sharp witticisms, all going on beneath the thick fug that would have hung in the air from countless cigars and cigarettes. “Oh, to have been a fly on the wall.”
“Fly nothing, Aunt Jess,” Victoria said. “You’d have been right in there with them.”
“Oh, you are sweet,” I said, “but no. I have my readers, and I daresay fans, who insist my books are clever. But the brilliance…” I turned again to gaze at the bar and never finished my thought, as it was interrupted by chants of “Pepe” coming from Mort’s end of the table.
He’d gotten Seth and somehow one of the waiters involved.
Howard turned red but stood up anyway. The room had quieted at Mort’s chants, as other diners craned their necks to discover the source of the commotion, so Howard had a captive audience as he began to rap the jingle, first quietly but gaining in volume as he spotted smiling faces encouraging him.
I’m Pepe the Pineapple and I bring to you
A sweet tropical snack, a powerhouse true,
Of copper and manganese and Vitamin C.
Pick one up today, just listen to me:
Pineapple, pineapple, pineapple:
A golden treat for you and me.
The room erupted in applause, and Howard took a quick bow and dropped back into his seat.
I’m happy to say we had a lovely dinner, without a single reference to the trivia show, the gambling conspiracy, or Ray’s murder, but then, just when Mort’s and Seth’s thoughts turned toward the dessert menu, Maureen said, “I have an idea of what to do with the prize money.”
“I thought we were going to redo the kitchen,” Mort said.
“That can wait,” she said. “I’ve decided I don’t want the money. It’s like blood money, and I’d feel better if we didn’t hold on to it.”
“What did you have in mind?” Mort asked.
“I want to give it away,” she said. “All of it. There’s always a fundraiser or two going on in Cabot Cove.”
“The library is trying to raise money for an addition to house a library of things,” I said.
“What is that?” Seth asked.
“Oh, I’ve heard of those!” Howard said. “They loan out things besides books that are useful to the community. Sometimes toys for kids, puzzles, games, even small appliances and power tools. Some offer passes to museums and galleries and zoos. Almost anything.”
“They have that in LA,” Victoria said. “My coworker told me she once borrowed a ukelele. And no, I don’t know why.”
“What do you think?” Maureen asked Mort. “Put our share into it?”
“As long as it’s you and not that martini talking,” he said, “I’m game.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Seth said.
“I’m in too,” I said. “And I had another idea.”
“I don’t know if I want to hear any more ideas,” Seth said. “That last one just cost us a hundred thousand dollars.”
“This one wouldn’t cost anything,” I said, “but with our donation, we could suggest a name for the collection.”
“Tell me it’s not Mainely Brilliant,” Seth said, which caused everyone at our table to laugh—well, except for Mort, who’d come up with the name.
“No, I was thinking the Jean O’Neil Library of Things,” I said, recalling my dear friend and Cabot Cove’s beloved librarian, who’d lost her long battle with MS a few years ago.
“Jess, that’s perfect,” Maureen said.
Silence followed, probably as we all recalled our own memories of Jean, until the server came back asking if we’d thought about dessert, which set Mort and Seth on another frenzy.
“What is the cobbler of the day?” I heard Seth ask, and I leaned my head on my hand and just soaked in the atmosphere.