“Fatty was cremated, anyway,” MacLaine noted, taking a delicate swig from a cup of whiskey Davis offered.

Thoughts of jails and hot tubs ate at Charlie’s insides like sulfuric acid; by the time Sammy fired Fat Tony’s gun at the angel-adorned crypt of a long-dead racist producer, propelling stone shrapnel into Charlie’s shoulder, the congressman was grateful for an off-ramp to head back to the hotel. He was relieved that Margaret was similarly inclined, a comfort that evaporated as soon as Margaret opened the trunk of their rental car looking for a first-aid kit. There lay Lola, her eyes shot out, her mouth open, her body twisted unnaturally. Margaret gasped, instinctively backing away, fleeing death. Charlie stopped breathing altogether for maybe thirty seconds. He had seen death before, had caused it before, but there was something physically painful about seeing someone who had been so full of life snuffed out callously like just another cigarette.

Chapter Fourteen

Los Angeles, California

January 1962

“Dead bodies just happen to show up whenever you two are around,” Detective Meehan observed.

Margaret—exhausted after the long night of drinking and revelry followed by the shock and horror in the cemetery parking lot—rolled her eyes. “Didn’t a cop say that to Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity?” she asked. “Your delivery was better, though,” she added with a broad and insincere smile. She had been shaken by the sight of poor Lola, but she was not about to allow herself to be bullied by this fraud.

Meehan snorted. “Pretty glib for someone with a corpse in her trunk.”

“Pretty glib for a cop who knows about the corpse only because we immediately called the police,” Margaret said, cool as November.

“Chris Powell was killed shortly after you came to town, and now there’s this doll,” he said. “I don’t want to tell my supervisors that you’re not being cooperative. There was a dead girl in your trunk, Mrs. Marder.”

“Dr. Marder,” she said quietly.

“Pardon?”

“Look,” she said, exhaling deeply, “we’re obviously horrified. We called and are cooperating, and we’ll tell you anything you need to know. Just spare me the film noir dialogue.”

It soon became clear to Meehan, though, that she didn’t know much. To Margaret, Lola Bridgewater was one of dozens of young women who flitted around the edges of Rat Pack parties. “The people you should be talking to are Mr. Sinatra and his pals,” she told Meehan. “Or her friend Judy. I barely knew Lola.”

“Why would anyone whack her?” Meehan asked.

Like half the locals Margaret had met since she arrived, Meehan acted as if there were a camera on him; he had all the scenery-chewing subtlety of Kirk Douglas. She thought momentarily of Bugs Bunny pretending to be Edward G. Robinson: Myah, see! It’ll be coytans for you, Mugsy! Coytans!