“Why? To bring her back to life?” Margaret said. She’d retreated into pure survival mode. “I’m worried about them placing us at the scene. LAPD is already trying to frame us.” She took her foot off the gas pedal.

“The sooner LAPD gets there, the better the chance they have of finding her killer,” Sheryl Ann said.

Margaret considered that. She spotted a phone booth near an empty corner, pulled over, and called the cops. After giving them the address and saying she suspected wrongdoing, she hung up. Next she called Addington White, reversing the charges. When he answered, she offered a quick description of what she’d seen, save for the clue Charlotte had apparently written on the sheet with her own blood. White thanked her for the call and assured her he’d have field agents from the FBI’s Los Angeles office head there at once.

Back in the car, Sheryl Ann directed Margaret to their destination as best she could figure it out: Sunset to Highland to Hollywood Boulevard to Beachwood Drive. The fancy homes they whizzed by came in four styles: Spanish, Mediterranean, French Normandy, English Tudor. One after the other, like the repetitive backgrounds of Bugs Bunny cartoons to which Frankenheimer had once referred.

“Why are you so convinced we need to do this?” Sheryl Ann asked.

“Charlotte told me she had documents that were shocking that she’d taken from the locked file cabinets at work,” Margaret said. “She must not have brought them to her home, though. I’m certain that’s what they were looking for when they killed her.”

“But why are we going to the Hollywood sign?”

“The H she drew in blood on the sheet,” Margaret said. “And her obsession with Peg Entwistle, who jumped from it.”

“Take a left here on Ledgewood,” Sheryl Ann said. “And we’re going to take a quick right to get to Mulholland. How good a hiker are you?”

“I wouldn’t call the incline from the Lower East Side to the Upper East Side particularly steep,” Margaret said. “Except socially.”

They hit the end of the road, parked, and hopped out of the car. The sign was lit above them, but beyond that the mountain was dark. So as to not trip on rocks and brambles, Margaret illuminated the ground in front her of her with her cigarette lighter while Sheryl Ann followed. Behind them, the lights of downtown Los Angeles shimmered as the two women began to scramble up the canyon to the Hollywood sign. They felt as distant and remote as the stars above them.

Chapter Twenty-One

Anaheim, California

April 1962