Fatally Haunted Read online

  Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles Presents

  FATALLY HAUNTED

  Edited by Rachel Howzell Hall, Sheila Lowe, and Laurie Stevens

  With an Introduction by Cara Black

  Compilation Copyright © 2019 by Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Fatally Haunted

  Introduction

  Cara Black

  Death of the Hollywood Sign Girl

  A.P. Jamison

  King Hanuman

  Alison McMahan

  Coincidence

  Mark Hague

  Darkness Keeps Chasing

  Peter Sexton

  The Funnel of Love

  Cyndra Gernet

  Tick-Tock

  Lisa Ciarfella

  Cat Walks into a Bank

  Gobind Tanaka

  The End Justifies the Means

  Tony Chiarchiaro

  Shifting Reflections

  Julie G. Beers

  Palimpsest

  Micheal Kelly

  Blood Shadows

  B.J. Graf

  Strands of Time

  Roger Cannon

  Auble’s Ghost

  Julia Bricklin

  Resurrection

  Jennifer Younger

  About the Editors and Contributors

  Anthologies by Sisters in Crime LA

  Preview from The Unrepentant by E.A. Aymar

  Preview from Silent Remains by Jerry Kennealy

  Preview from Swann’s Down by Charles Salzberg

  Introduction

  Cara Black

  We’re all acquainted with a version of Los Angeles, the place of dreams, of stardom, originally the city of angels, once a pit stop surrounded by orange groves. Even if you’ve never visited, the place conjures up images—tinsel town, spider webs of freeways and those lush purple jacaranda trees. This city of seventy-two suburbs as Dorothy Parker called it and in Orson Welles’ words a “bright and guilty place.” For me, the draw was the Sunset Strip and the L.A. of Raymond Chandler. Chandler’s words painted a noir locale, evoked shady lowlifes, tarnished sides of glitz, and sparks of beauty tainted by the past. In Chandler’s Los Angeles, “the streets were dark with something more than night.”

  You could say I joined Sisters in Crime in Los Angeles with some of that clinging in my mind. More for the camaraderie, mean margaritas and talking “shop” in the bar. It’s amazing what fellow crime writers talk about in their “natural” habitat; blood spatter patterns, a crooked DA, going on an adverb diet, the wild mountain lions in the San Gabriel mountains, plotting a chase scene in Silver Lake. Talk to crime writers at a bar and be prepared.

  These fellow writers’ talents abound in the fourteen stories in Fatally Haunted, an evocative Sisters in Crime anthology. Loaded with a wide range of tales going from sun-drenched secrets to the shadowy and dark. All noir-themed and haunting. These stories showcase the mystique and menace made famous in films and novels and the Angelenos who live them.

  Fatally Haunted immerses us in the authors’ gifted take on a city “…discernible only in glimpses,” as James Ellroy says. These glimpses are haunted—fatally haunted.

  From a missing twin sister in Julie G. Beers’ “Shifting Reflections,” to a twentieth-century serial killer’s bizarre clues in Julia Bricklin’s “Auble’s Ghost,” from “Strands of Time” by Roger Cannon where a ten-year reunion brings murder, and in “The End Justifies the Means” Tony Chiarchiaro explores the age-old question is sweet revenge worth the ultimate toll? In “Tick-Tock” Lisa Ciarfella’s story of a woman on the run doing one last heist yet can’t outrun her demons, to 1930s’ Los Angeles featuring in “The Funnel of Love” by Cyndra Gernet where a carney worker tries to escape the past, B.J. Graf explores the mind of a serial killer who’s made a mistake at the crime scene in “Blood Shadows,” to “Coincidence” by Mark Hague a light rail engineer suffers deja vu from a previous murder committed on the tracks, and the iconic Hollywood sign features a haunted H in A.P. Jamison’s “Death of the Hollywood Sign Girl.” “Palimpsest” brings an antique dealer in the sights of a man obsessed with a lost treasure by Micheal Kelly, and the first Khmer-American police officer on the LBPD, in Alison McMahan’s “King Hanuman” doesn’t bargain that a simple arrest will lead to a gang war, to Peter Sexton’s “Darkness Keeps Chasing” the worst parent’s nightmare comes true when an LAPD detective’s daughter is abducted, and back to 1948 when a waitress recognizes the man who left her for dead years earlier in “Resurrection” by Jennifer Younger, and topping it off in Gobind Tanaka’s thrilling “Cat Walks into a Bank” a Marine Corps vet suffers PTSD flashbacks while thwarting a violent bank robbery.

  Make yourself a cocktail, turn off the phone, settle back and open Fatally Haunted. You’ll find the city of angels haunted by devils.

  —Cara Black

  Back to TOC

  Death of the Hollywood Sign Girl

  A.P. Jamison

  Los Angeles looked a lot nicer from atop the massive wood and metal “H” of the Hollywood Sign—I couldn’t see the rats or the trash or the broken dreams from here. I had already written my obit. It was safely tucked into my breast pocket, where I knew it would survive the fall.

  I, Jake Merriman Sinclair, would be dead very soon.

  Dusk had descended on the city of angels and devils. My half-empty bottle of booze was jammed into my blazer pocket. The evening breeze, a bit brisker up here, cut through my clothes, but I felt no pain. My tongue tasted of new whiskey and old coffee.

  Hollywood. A place where dreams came true…When the sign was built in 1923 proclaiming this to be Hollywoodland—they were selling lots for a new housing development—and not heralding the siren call of the silver screen.

  Nevertheless, the sign had become a beacon of hope to so many like me, dazzled by the big screen dream, that in 1949, the powers-that-be dropped “land” from the end of the sign. Hollywood had officially made her formal debut.

  Back in the darkness, I wrestled my cell phone from my pants pocket, thankful for its light. Steadying myself, I scrolled to the email, feeling compelled to read the key bruising words again, even though I now knew them by heart.

  “We are passing on your screenplay: Death of the Hollywood Sign Girl. The story about a Hollywood starlet who killed herself in the 1930s is old news and not relevant today. We are looking for stud superheroes not sad starlets.”

  My hand shook. “The starlet,” I shouted to the world, “was named Peg Entwistle!” I stared down at the water-challenged bushes clinging to the empty Hollywood hills below me. “The world needs to know the true tragedy of Peg. Her story has to be told so it doesn’t happen again.”

  My sneaker slipped off the sign making the whiskey in my system race around my heart like a three-wheeled go-cart. I quickly found my footing and shouted, “Peg. You had the talent!”

  Millicent Lilian
“Peg” Entwistle had been a successful New York theater actress who headed to Los Angeles during The Great Depression in hopes of finding film opportunities. The age of talkies had just begun, and my research told me Hollywood was looking for actresses with Broadway experience. Money was tight, so Peg had planned to move in with her Uncle Harold at 2428 Beachwood Canyon just below the Hollywoodland Sign. I could almost see her Uncle’s house from my unique “H” vantage point.

  “Peg,” I yelled. “Can you hear me?”

  Once she had arrived in L.A., she was met with one cold rejection after another. Like so many actresses after a big audition, she raced home, sat by the phone and waited and waited and waited for a call that never came. So, on the hot night of September 16, 1932, drunk and depressed, Peg left her Uncle’s house, hiked up to the Hollywoodland Sign, climbed fifty feet up a workman’s ladder to the top of the “H”—losing her shoe in the process—and jumped to her death.

  She was twenty-four years old.

  A few days after Peg died, The Beverly Hills Playhouse called and offered her the lead role…about a woman driven to suicide.

  Suddenly, I could smell the scent of gardenia—her favorite perfume—while I imagined how she felt, standing on top of this sign. I am nine years older than Peg was when she died. My screenplay was about her short, sad life. I understood her pain.

  My world had become so woeful these last few months. My writer’s block was bigger than a small country. The severe designer sofa bed at my friend’s house hated me. My last girlfriend broke up with me. Apparently, she needed to find out what she really wanted, and it wasn’t me. She ended it right around the time my ’98 Ford Fiesta took a permanent siesta, and I had to start taking the bus. I hardly had enough money to keep my beloved golden retriever, Hemingway The Marshmallow, in kibbles.

  I would rather starve than let The Marshmallow go hungry, so I got a job as a barista. But I was always one step away from being fired for not staying focused on the coffee task at hand. My mind was always elsewhere.

  Seeing nighttime L.A. unfold all around me, I sighed. The departing gray clouds and pink sun were spectacular, but the best part was the thousands of tiny lights spread out below between the mountains and moon-filled sky. I took another drink. I needed another drink…I already missed The Marshmallow, but I had left him in very loving hands.

  It was hard to believe that eleven years ago I had moved out here from the Midwest or the “Middle-West” as F. Scott Fitzgerald liked to say. While I was no Fitzgerald, it comforted me to know that he too had struggled to succeed in Hollywood.

  Like F. Scott, my first big love didn’t understand that she was supposed to marry me.

  Her name was Zoey Reynolds. Head cheerleader. Valedictorian. Dog lover. Beer drinker. Bowling champ.

  In high school everyone loved her. Especially me. One day near the end of senior year, when I had been waiting at her locker with a cup of her favorite coffee, she turned the corner and grinned. And, there it was—her right, front tooth, which slightly overlapped her left one. She loved that slight imperfection. I was devoted to it.

  “No,” Zoey said, her smile disappearing as she opened her locker.

  “No, what?” I asked, puzzled. Lately, she had been part ice angel, and part hot, darling demon.

  “No, Jake, I won’t go to the dance with you. Even if you are prom king.”

  My shoulders dropped and my stomach followed closely behind.

  “You’re too nice, Jake. I would ruin you.” She slowly exhaled as if suddenly exhausted, and flipped a piece of her champagne-colored hair off of her perfect forehead.

  “I’m a lot meaner than you think.” I said, crossing my arms to drive home my point.

  “No, you are not, but you…are an adorable liar, Jake Sinclair. You are meant to tell beautiful stories. You need to leave home. Leave here. Just go. If you stay, you’ll end up like your sad dad who let his dreams die. That would break my heart.”

  You’ve just broken mine.

  “Jake,” Zoey said. “Never give up on your writing dreams. Promise me.”

  All I could do was nod as she left me standing there, unable to move until I made sure the tepid coffee I was holding met its own depressing end at the bottom of the nearby school trashcan.

  The shrill of police sirens in the distance brought me out of the past. The LAPD were headed my way. It was now illegal to scale this beloved landmark sign. Had someone seen or heard me calling out to Peg?

  Should I do a swan dive like she had? Or just jump feet first?

  Looking down, I saw a sleek 1930s’ Lincoln convertible pull up to the road near the ravine below me. A woman was sitting in the front seat behind an oversized steering wheel.

  I blinked. Now I was almost hanging off the “H.”

  Could that be Peg? She looked just like she did in the photos I had uncovered: the blonde hair in a fashionable, flapper-esque wavy bob, the vintage coat and the classic red lipstick. She leaned over and opened the passenger door.

  Then she smiled and waved for me to come down and join her.

  The police sirens were almost upon me.

  “Come on, Middle-West,” she urged in a voice both sultry and sad.

  I felt a rush of air…

  And then I was sitting in the lush, leather passenger seat of her vintage convertible.

  I shut the car door, which was long and heavy, and inhaled her floral perfume. She pressed one of the big rectangular buttons on her AM dashboard radio to change the station.

  Mildred Bailey was singing “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams.” I could hear the fabulous scratching sound the turntable needle made on the vinyl record coming through the radio speaker.

  “Never give up on your writing dreams. Isn’t that what Zoey said?”

  Zoey…

  Peg continued. “If you had known she would die of cancer six months later, you’d have never left her. Zoey knew that.” Peg put her hand on mine. “She’s not ready for you to join her.”

  I tried to process what Peg was saying while her eerie words still echoed in my ears. I closed my eyes while they filled up like a fountain of foggy tears.

  “And you need to know that I wasn’t a coward,” Peg said, softly. “I didn’t kill myself.”

  “You…?” Words escaped me.

  “I didn’t jump, Jake. I was pushed,” she said.

  Stunned, my mouth stayed closed for once, but I opened my wet eyes, and she solemnly nodded.

  We were now winding our way down the hill just as the police passed us. Orange and purple wildflowers stood in solidarity near a lone sycamore tree on the side of the road. Peg handed me a martini, complete with two olives, in a chilled cocktail glass.

  “Who killed you?” I asked, finally finding my words.

  “That’s what you need to find out,” she whispered in the clear diction of a classically trained stage actress. “Start with the note I left.”

  I glanced back and studied the Hollywood Sign with new intensity as it disappeared in the distance. Peg had been murdered…

  “Jake…Jake.” A deep voice boomed close to my ear.

  I turned and realized that I was staring at the nose ring of my twenty-five-year-old hipster, Starbucks manager, Serge, scratching his scruffy sideburn with his hand.

  “Snap. Snap. You have customers waiting, dude.”

  I felt the hot coffee I was making burn my hand through the sides of the cup. I looked down. In the Venti, decaf, dry, extra whip, half-caf, caramel cappuccino I had been spelling out the word “murder” in the foam. I glanced up. The young woman standing before me was tall, tempting and blonde—like some sort of glamorous ghost. She smelled of gardenias.

  I now had a lump in my throat as big as the extra whipped cream I added to cover up the word “murder.” Handing her the large coffee, I stammered, “Sorry about that.”

  “No worries,” she replied in the voice of a classically trained actress. Then she smiled. Her right
, front tooth slightly overlapped her left one. “Thanks for the coffee, and never give up on those daydreams,” she said, as she turned on her pointed high-heel and headed for the exit.

  My stunned eyes followed her as she disappeared through the door.

  Past the sunlit window, I caught a glimpse of the Hollywood Sign in the distance and could almost hear a voice whisper, “Hollywood always loves a murder. Find out who killed me, darling Middle-West. That won’t be old news…”

  In that twisted twilight moment, I knew I had to go get my beloved Marshmallow right now and honor the promise I had made to Zoey long ago.

  It was time to put down the bottle and pick up the pen. Peg hadn’t given up; neither should I.

  Back to TOC

  King Hanuman

  Alison McMahan

  Long Beach, CA, 1990

  “They say the murder victim was the head of the Jewel Orchid gang.” Officer Thavary Keo steered the police cruiser through the now-thinning crowds. Last night’s drive-by shooting had led to tonight’s anti-immigrant demonstration. After the hot and stressful day, it felt good to drive with the window down and relish the briny night air.

  My first demonstration. Lucky it was peaceful.

  Her new partner, Officer Carlos Urrieta, looked like a star from a telenovela. Thick hair, cropped close to his skull. Curved, elegant eyebrows, athletic build, his eyes golden brown where hers were dark, his skin just a shade lighter than hers. He opened the box of Khmer cakes and studied the contents. When his hand crept into the box, Thavary slapped it away. “Those are for your mother.”