Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Diane Howard Murray, the missing model whose name Margot had scrawled on her arm at the party, is found dead in an alleyway in Calabasas on a sweltering day in late July.
Little is said about her, or about any of the details of her murder, in the newspapers.
All she is afforded is a small paragraph, a cursory acknowledgment of a death, tucked away among advertisements for golf course developments and meatball subs.
There are no mentions of any links to the previous killings, no tributes, no pleas for information from the public.
Margot knows why this is. She knows why there were no half-page photos of Diane, as there had been of the cheerleader Emily Roswell.
Newspaper reporters don’t write about trailer parks, and Golden Point is no exception to the rule.
Named ambitiously after the color the sun turns the dirt as it sets, Golden Point is not somewhere you’ll find on postcards or in holiday brochures—a mixed neighborhood, home to low-income families and those forced to watch as town planners build on land their families owned.
It is not “well-kept,” like the neighboring suburb of Hyder Hills, whose residents spend their lives alongside the second houses of Hollywood execs, mansions looming high on the shrub-pocked hillsides.
But Margot knows that “aspirational” suburb is separated from Golden Point by only a couple of meaningless miles.
She also knows that “aspirational” is just another way of saying “rich and white.”
In some ways, though, Margot feels more at home in Golden Point than she ever has on the manicured streets of LA. It’s not her first visit here, after all.
She drives easily through the park’s gates, left wide-open and rusting, no security guard checking ID, no bolts, no padlocks.
The message is clear: If you’re willing to come here, have at it.
There’s a sign, its neon bulbs cracked and furred with dirt, welcoming visitors with fading cheer.
Duke, from his spot on the passenger seat, thrusts his head out of the open window and barks.
Margot shushes the dog and locates the lot she’s looking for.
In the rearview mirror, she can see a couple of old folks in deck chairs, half eyeing her from outside their trailers.
She makes for the front door of the Airstream, its metal contracting noisily in the heat. She knocks and waits. She knows the code. Three loud knocks, followed by a pause, then four more.
The door is opened by a man whose shoulders fill the whole frame; Ray must have taken on some more security. The man blinks stone-faced at Margot, then flinches as Duke licks his hand with a wet tongue.
“Ah, ah, ah!”
Margot leans to the side and sees, behind the guard’s huge bulk, Ray Roberts seated at a cramped table, waggling his finger at her.
“Get that horse out of here, Margot. He’ll eat all my stock.”
She glances down at the dog. “He’s a Great Dane,” she calls weakly, as if that’s the answer to anything.
“He’ll tolerate being tied up outside, thank you very much, Margot.” Ray places exaggerated horn-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose and bends over the table. He’s weighing powders and pills, a pile of brown paper packages stacked up by his elbow.
She sighs, then retreats down the steps, searching for something that will take Duke’s strength. She settles for a fence post, hopes for the best and loops the leash around the base several times.
“Now, that’s better.” Ray smiles when she returns. “We’re not a zoo in here.” He turns back to the pills and begins diligently portioning out a new pile. “Just a social visit?” He doesn’t look up.
The guard has stepped away and sits thumbing his way through Playboy. The air smells bitter. “I’ll Never Smile Again” by Doris Day is playing on the radio.
“I broke a heel,” she says. “The Hélène Arpels. Taupe.”
It is not just pills and powders that Ray Roberts deals in.
He also does a fine line in rare designer shoes.
Margot had heard rumors a while back that the studio stylists sometimes went to him if they wanted something special for one of their pictures at short notice.
Marilyn had even worn a pair of his Ferragamo pumps once.
Margot had had to check him out for herself.
“Okay, so we know you’re not here for the Hélène Arpels.”
Margot begins to protest.
Ray interrupts her with a raised finger stacked with rings. “You’re a terrible liar.” He removes his glasses and watches her from beneath his brow. “Try harder.”
“The heel did break.” Technically, it did.
“What is it that you really want, Margot? I’m busy here.”
She holds his gaze, considers, momentarily, trying to lie. “Did you know Diane Howard Murray?” she asks outright.
Ray almost recoils, shakes his head in surprise. “Why is someone like you asking about a girl like that?”
“What do you mean, someone like me?”
“Well, Margot, forgive me for being blunt, but Diane wasn’t someone who someone like you is normally concerned with.”
“Didn’t she want to be a model? I’m into fashion.”
Ray raises a skeptical eyebrow.
She lets him. She is being glib.
“Girls are being harmed.” Margot steps closer to the table.
The guard glances up from his magazine, then at Ray, who keeps him in place with a shake of the head.
“They’re being killed. Diane was not the first, and at this rate she won’t be the last. I know she lived in Golden Point. I’m just trying to find out a bit more about her, okay?”
“So…what?” He allows his glasses to drop to his chest on their chain. “You’re working for the cops?”
She feels the energy in the room change instantly.
“No, Ray, I’m not working for the cops.”
He scans her face, and she knows he sees the real meaning there, that she is working in spite of the cops.
“Was she in the game?” Margot thinks about Beverley’s theory that the killer might be using prostitutes. Well, she knows plenty of girls around Golden Point who had to resort to that to get by. Ray does, too.
“Folks won’t like you poking around.” He avoids the question.
“Was she?” Margot can’t help thinking of her mother blotting her lipstick in the mirror, heavy perfume in the air, the rush of the cold streaming in through the door as she stepped out into the darkness.
Ray considers for a while, stroking his glasses chain. “She may have done it on the side,” he relents, “but I heard she really was making a go of the modeling.”
Margot nods. She knew it. “Does she have family around here?”
“Her grandma Pearl owns the junk store on the corner,” Ray says eventually. “Less of a store, more of a shack. Posters in the window. You won’t miss it. But hey.” He fixes Margot’s eye, warns, “She’s just lost her granddaughter. Go easy.”
He’s already chopping powder by the time the door slams shut behind her.
She leaves Duke tied up outside. Ray won’t mind.
Duke looks like a watchdog, even if he acts like a poodle.
She turns back when she is halfway down the next lot and sees the security guard bending to place a bowl of water beside the animal as he pats its head.
—
Ray was right. Diane’s face is plastered across the windows of the junk store.
She is captured in multiple iterations of the same pose, with the same wide smile, the same dark bob sharp at the chin.
She was beautiful—that’s clear—like someone you’d see on a TV talent show, in a sequined dress shining under studio lights.
Margot can relate to wanting to find your way out of the life, the situation, that you were born into.
She herself had started out just like Diane.
Her mother had tried, as best she could, to raise her well, but it was hard when she had no money, no electricity, no food.
Margot had learned then that beauty, that appealing to men, was a means to better your situation.
So she studied it. Studied how best to get a man’s attention.
How best to manipulate those around you into believing you are something you are not.
She had no qualms about acknowledging her own beauty.
After all, she cannot take any credit for it.
She did not select the genes that gave her this face; her body was a gift from her mother.
It cannot be arrogant, surely, to admire the work of others.
She became a master at convincing people that she deserved to be in the room, that she had a command of herself and her body.
It made them want to be near her. It’s how she ended up meeting Stephen.
She never would have found herself at the same party as someone like him had she not looked the way she looks, had she not held herself the way she holds herself—unapologetically on show, never doubting that women wanted to be her and men wanted to be with her.
It was all an act, of course. A ruse. A lie honed from childhood.
Diane, too, had been using her looks, to try to find her way out of life at Golden Point.
And she was close, so very, very close, until everything was taken away from her.