significantly, I had not seen any of Marilyn’s spiral-bound notebooks.
Had somebody searched the place, and then tidied it? And someone later searched it again, and messed it back up? Or even worked on the scene to make it look less staged, so a pro like Clemmons wouldn’t pick up on it? Curiouser and curiouser.
Clemmons had then asked the doctors if they’d tried to revive her, and they both claimed it had been too late. Neither would hazard a guess what time she took the pills.
He was looking at me again. “If you’re a private detective, Mr. Heller, I assume you’re an ex-cop. Am I right?”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Well, in your experience, at a death scene where the victim’s doctor is present, whether accident, suicide, or even murder, weren’t the doctors helpful? Trying to be as informative as they could?”
“That’s pretty standard.”
“Well, these two had to be interrogated like goddamn suspects.”
Maybe that’s what they were.
“Something else strange-there was no drinking glass in that bedroom for her to have taken a single damn pill, let alone handfuls.”
“There was when I visited the scene, maybe an hour after you did.”
“Then it was planted. But that’s not the really strange thing-her bathroom? Where she would run a glass of water to take those pills? There was plumbing work in progress. You know, she was having a lot of repairs and remodeling done on the old place.”
“Right. Plumbing work. So what?”
“So the water in her bathroom was off.”
I gaped at him.
“It’s the truth, Mr. Heller. Turned off. She couldn’t have run a glass of water to save her life, never mind take it. She couldn’t use that bathroom, if she had to pee, either-she’d have to run down the hall.”
“Did you ask the doctors whether Marilyn took injections?”
“Yeah I did. Greenson never gave her any, but she was getting some kind of vitamin shot from Engelberg, had done so the day before she died, in fact. Both claimed she didn’t inject herself. And I didn’t see any needles around.”
He fell silent.
I prompted him: “Was that it? Did you search the house?”
“I gave the place a quick look,” he said with a gloomy shrug. “I was the first officer on the scene, but I’m not a detective. Didn’t spend much time doing it, and didn’t check the guest cottage, either… though, and this may sound crazy, I had this kind of sixth-sense feeling there were people out there. And I would have checked, but I got sidetracked.”
“Sidetracked how?”
“By seeing light coming from the garage, where I did check when I went looking for Mrs. Murray.”
“Looking for her?”
“Yeah. The biddy slipped away while I was questioning the docs in the death bedroom. So where do I find her? Out in the garage, the door up, where the washer and drier are. And she’s washing a load of clothes! She’d already washed one load and folded the linens and is doing a second, preparing a third!”
“Do you think the sheets on the bed were changed?”
“Maybe. Maybe the poor girl soiled them. Lots do, when they die. Maybe it was out of some sense of preserving a star’s dignity. I don’t know. And I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t think to ask, I was so flummoxed by it.”
“But you did question Murray, right?”
“Oh yeah, right there in the garage. While she folded fucking towels, pardon my French.”
The story she’d told Clemmons mirrored the one she had told Lieutenant Armstrong Sunday morning in Marilyn’s breakfast nook, but with one significant difference.
“Mrs. Murray said she found the body around midnight, and that she immediately called Dr. Greenson, who arrived about half an hour later.”
“Did she say why she checked on Marilyn at midnight?”
“Yeah, and that also was odd. She said the light was on under Marilyn’s door, and the phone cord was running under, all the way down the hall from this spare bedroom where the two phones were. Okay, now first of all-”
“The thick-pile carpet prevented Murray from seeing a crack of light under the door.”
“Right! And second, not thirty seconds before, Mrs. Murray had said how Marilyn often kept one of her phones in there with her at bedtime-to make late-night calls when she couldn’t sleep.”
“Which was most nights.”
“Right, which was most nights. So what was suspicious about the phone cord under the door? It was typical, not unusual. Mrs. Murray also said the door was locked, but I didn’t see any keys around.”
Murray had told Clemmons the same tale she gave to Lieutenant Armstrong about Greenson having to break in the window.
“Even while she was fidgeting with that laundry, nervous as hell, she’s speaking in this soft, even, precise little voice. And everything she gave me seemed prepared, rehearsed as hell. Anyway, I went back to the bedroom, where the doctors were still keeping the body company.”
I gave him half a grin. “Let me guess. You wanted to ask them why they waited four hours to notify the police.”
“ Oh yeah. Well, this Greenson, in this smart-ass tone, says, ‘We had to get permission.’ And I say, ‘Who the hell from?’ Not terribly professional, but it was getting to me. And he says, ‘The studio publicity department. Twentieth Century-Fox. Miss Monroe is making a film there.’ Like I should know better than to ask.”
“Told you this right out.”
He cut the air with a hand. “Right out. I’ve heard about this kind of thing, but I was dumbfounded. And when I asked those docs what they’d done during those four hours, they told me-you’re gonna love this, Mr. Heller-they said, ‘We were just talking.’”
“About what in hell?”
“Oh, when I asked them… they shrugged. Cop at the scene of a suspicious death, they know it’s a coroner’s case, they know they have to notify the police in such an instance, and right away… and what do they do? Just shrug.”
Greenson had then told Clemmons of discovering Marilyn’s body in a manner perfectly consistent with Murray’s version.
“His only additional touch,” Clemmons said, “was saying he removed the phone receiver from the woman’s hand. Said she must have been trying to call for help.”
“Calling for help?” I asked. “With her housekeeper down the hall, ten feet away?”
“I know. But it wasn’t my job to investigate, was it? I was there to take down the initial report. Record what I saw and heard. Then I was relieved by Sergeant Iannone.”
“Good man?”
A shrug. “Good enough, I’d say. Only one thing about Marv I’m not crazy about-he’s in tight with Hamilton’s crowd.”
“Works for intel, you mean?”
“No, but works with them, time to time. They like him. One of his special duty assignments is kind of interesting, in light of things.”
“Interesting how?”
“Well, whenever the president or the attorney general visits the Lawfords, Iannone gets the assignment from Hamilton to work the beach house.”
Neither of us said anything. Colorful fish swam by, swishing their tails, the kind of display they invented Technicolor for. The fountain bubbled. Squirrels scampered.
“I filed a report when I got back to the substation,” he said. “For all the good it did. Then I called Jim.”
“Jim?”
