chinos with knee patches, and scuffed shoes. I’d come in a Ban-Lon polo and white jeans and was munching popcorn.
Jefferies slouched on the bench, legs akimbo, folded hands dangling between them; his voice was soft, medium-range, only occasionally expressive.
“Mr. Heller, couple things we need to get straight right away.”
“Okay.”
“This is strictly off-the-record. I don’t care what you do with this information, as long as you don’t attach it to my name.”
“All right.”
He shrugged. “That’s the terms. That, and cash.”
I stopped eating popcorn, reached into my right jeans pocket and brought the five folded C-notes out for some air.
When I’d returned them to my pocket, his eyes showed that the money had impressed him; then the mournful expression returned.
“First thing that nobody knows,” he said, “is I was pretty much there all day. I was remodeling Miss Monroe’s kitchen. Laid new floor tiles, among other things. Funny.”
“Funny?”
“Started out so average, such a nothing day. You never know, do you, when it’s gonna be the worst day of your life? Well, this one was right in there.”
A gull shrieked. A teenage girl laughed. I chewed popcorn.
Jefferies said he’d got to the house on Fifth Helena Drive around 8:30 A.M., and hadn’t left until after dawn Sunday morning, the same time I had.
“The first thing out of the ordinary,” he said, “was this argument between the Newcomb woman and Miss Monroe. It was about loyalty. About whether this Newcomb gal was loyal to her, or to the… you know, the Kennedys.”
“How did this come up?”
“I gathered Miss Monroe-it’s not disrespectful I call her Marilyn, because she let me call her that-Marilyn, she was expecting Bobby Kennedy-you know, the attorney general?”
Marilyn Monroe-you know, the actress?
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“She’d been expecting him to come to the house Friday night. And he hadn’t showed. Way I took it, the Newcomb woman said she could make that happen, only it didn’t. Anyway, she fired her.”
“Who fired… What?”
“Marilyn fired Newcomb.”
“This was when?”
“Just before lunch. Newcomb gal slept till noon. Marilyn, she’d been out gardening in the morning. Also talking to some photographer who wanted to take pictures of her for Playboy. The guy was trying to talk her into it, and I guess she must’ve agreed at some earlier time, and was saying now how she had second thoughts, because of maybe it would make her out a sex object. Is what I gathered.”
“Back to Pat Newcomb…”
“Okay, Newcomb. They argue, Marilyn fires her, and then I was doing some work outside and missed why, but for some reason the woman is still hanging around all day.”
“Newcomb, you mean.”
“Yeah. Only she spends all her time in that room where the two phones are. Like she’s just waiting for one to ring, and maybe won something or her lab results are in. And in fact she’s still there when Kennedy and Lawford show up, and as far as I know never comes out.”
“When was that?”
“Sometime between three and four. Marilyn had this nice spread of food ready, so she must have expected them. Marilyn looked real nice. Not all movie star decked out, but nice. You were there at the house a few times, Mr. Heller. You know how good she could look, not trying so hard.”
I just nodded.
His eyebrows went up. “Oh, I skipped something that’s maybe important.”
“That’s okay, Norm. Take your time.”
“After lunch, I finished up in the kitchen, and I was loading my tools in my pickup. Never meant to stay all day. But Eunice comes out and she looks like death warmed over.”
This was her son-in-law, so I decided not to point out that Murray always looked like death warmed over.
“She was shaking her head and sighing and so on, and I say, ‘What’s wrong, Eunice?’ And she says, all surprised and upset, ‘Marilyn just fired me.’”
“Fired her? Mrs. Murray was fired Saturday afternoon, too?”
“That’s right. Marilyn wanted her to pack her things and leave, be gone by the end of the day. Which is why I stuck around into the evening.”
“I don’t follow, Norm.”
“Well, Eunice practically lived at that place. She never gave up her own apartment, but three or four nights a week, she’d stay at Marilyn’s. So she had a lot of stuff around. I was to stay and help her pack and get her things together. There was more than would fit in her car. So we started loading up my truck.”
“Did Mrs. Murray say why she’d been fired?”
“No.” He shrugged and gave me an earnest look. “Maybe Marilyn finally figured out Eunice was spying on her.”
“Uh, yeah. Maybe that was it.”
“So we’re packing up the truck, and sometime between three and four, Peter Lawford comes around and he’s got Bobby Kennedy himself along. Big as life. Well, really, fairly small, but you know what I mean.”
“Were you around after they showed up?”
“Not very long at all. Mr. Lawford made it real clear he wanted Eunice and me out of there, and told us to go to the market. He gave me some money and said to bring back some Cokes for everybody, but not to hurry. So an hour later, more or less, we come back with a couple cartons of Coke, and their car is gone.”
“What kind of car, Norm?”
“Mercedes, I think.” He shifted and the wooden bench groaned. “We went in the house and Marilyn looked just terrible. She was just… boiling mad. Just sore as hell in a way I never saw from her. Weird thing, though, she seemed scared and burning all at once. That’s when my mother-in-law called Dr. Greenson.”
“Called him because she worked for him, right?”
“Yeah. Him and Marilyn. Nice work if you can get it-two paychecks for one job? Anyway, Greenson said he’d come right over. And I think he got there around five.”
“Had Pat Newcomb gone?”
“No. She did shortly after that. The doc went in and talked to Marilyn a little while, then came back out and says to Newcomb, who’s in the living room with Eunice, ‘Marilyn wonders when you’re leaving, Pat. When are you leaving?’ And Newcomb gets up and walks out, just like that. With not one word.”
“How long was Greenson there?”
“Maybe… till seven P.M.? He comes out and tells Eunice that he’s instructed Marilyn to take two Nembutals, and then asks Mrs. Murray to stay overnight and keep an eye on her. With all her belongings packed and everything, Eunice wanted to make sure that ‘met with Marilyn’s approval,’ but the doc said it did.”
“Norm, why didn’t you leave at that point?”
“Eunice asked me to stay. She was real shaky and upset, over everything that happened, so I sat and watched television with her.”
“Where was Marilyn?”
“Never saw her all evening. She was in her room. Some time, maybe ten thirty, Eunice got a phone call. Came back in and said she had to check on Marilyn. We were watching Gunsmoke, and I wasn’t really paying much attention to Eunice. All of a sudden she comes rushing back and says Marilyn is gone.”
“Gone as in dead?”
