Night of the Pentagram Read online

Page 13


  A jolt ripped her out of the trance. Someone kicked her chair.

  “What?” she said, trying to focus her eyes on the image in front of her.

  “I said ‘get up.’” It was Jewel, kicking the leg of the lounge chair. “It’s time for dinner. Stay out here all night, for all I care.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes, willing Jewel to go away. When she opened them again she was alone by the pool.

  Chapter Seven

  “Who’s up for Monopoly?” Bobby said as they spilled into the drawing room after dinner.

  “Boring,” said Jewel.

  “I think Candyland would be more your speed,” said Chet.

  “That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” Bobby said. Chet and Bryce sure loved messing with the boy, but Elizabeth was glad to see Bobby was being a good sport about it.

  “How about a game of cards?” Dakota suggested.

  “Just as long as it’s not Tarot cards,” Chet said.

  “Poker?”

  “I’m in,” said Bryce.

  Elizabeth found card games confusing, so she resigned herself to sitting in the corner library area near Jewel with the autographed copy of Goodbye, Babylon open on her lap while the others gathered round the table with a fresh pack of playing cards. Jewel St. John’s improbable melodrama did little to distract her. She was still obsessed with the voodoo doll and the book on Satanism that had been planted in her suitcase. Struck with an urge to find the evil little book she began pulling out various books from the shelves at random.

  As usual, Jewel was sprawled on one of the couches with her writer’s paraphernalia fanned out about her. Folders with pages spilling out of them, file cards, pens, markers, notepads, battered and dog eared paperback copies of her books monopolized enough seating for three people. She peered over the top edges of the half moon glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.

  “What on earth are you looking for?”

  “Something I saw yesterday. It was here, but now it’s gone.”

  “What was it? Maybe I borrowed it.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes continued to scan the book titles in the dim light. “I don’t exactly remember. I’ll recognize it when I see it.”

  “You’re looking for that book you tried to hide behind your back the other day, aren’t you?”

  “Have you seen it?”

  Jewel laughed. “You’re really something. Is this it?”

  Elizabeth read the title of the book Jewel held out to her. The Rise and Fall of Winterland Studios. She shook her head.

  “This is great stuff. It’s giving me great ideas for my new book. Here, tell me what you think of this.” Jewel handed her a thin stack of type-written sheets paper clipped together, fumbling to clear a seat for Elizabeth. Exasperated, Elizabeth sat on the opposite end of the couch from Jewel and leaned forward holding the sheaf of manuscript pages under the table lamp.

  The character in the scene, simply referred to as ‘she’, was preparing for bed. The manuscript described in excruciating detail how the young woman undressed in her bedroom. Elizabeth couldn’t imagine anyone, but lingerie fetishists, would find anything remotely erotic to this flowery prose. After reading the first few pages, Elizabeth realized the young woman in the scene was a thinly disguised version of herself. The pages amounted to little more than an elegantly worded pornographic scene between the young actress and the much older heroine, Babylon Rivers, Jewel’s fictional alter ego.

  Elizabeth looked up from the manuscript, startled to find Jewel sitting uncomfortably close to her on the couch. A hand came to rest on her knee, the clammy fingers warm through the fabric of her clothing. She flinched, but there was nowhere for her to retreat.

  The awkward moment was interrupted by a loud commotion from the card game at the table across the room. Elizabeth could hear Dakota giggling with glee as the three men vociferously accused her of foul play.

  “Aces full of nines? I'd put you on two pair.” Bryce slammed his cards down on the table.

  “Six hands in a row? That will teach us to play with Miss ESP,” said Bobby.

  “I’m not psychic, you know,” Dakota said. “It's not my fault you boys don't know when to call a bluff. These are the only good cards I've caught all night.”

  “Next you’ll try to chalk it up to women’s intuition,” said Chet.

  Elizabeth's attention was called back to the problem at hand by an assault on her senses. Jewel’s body moved in close, invading her personal space.

  “What do you think?” The older woman's breath was stained with the odor of cigarettes and Bourbon.

  “You can’t publish this. It's clearly about me!”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, honey,” Jewel purred. “I started this novel long before you and I met. But it is uncanny, don’t you think? Which would you say, art imitating life or life imitating art?”

  “I’m glad you find this sort of thing amusing.” Elizabeth could feel heat rising in her face.

  “Do you see me laughing, baby? Why don’t we slip upstairs while the boys play their little game? They’ll never notice we’re gone.”

  “I’m not like that.” Elizabeth began to get up from the couch, but Jewel's fingers became talons as they clamped down on her arm. Elizabeth jerked and bolted from the couch as if she'd received an electric shock.

  “What’s going on?” Bryce looked up from the card game.

  From behind her, Elizabeth heard a complete about-face in Jewel’s tone.

  “I was just showing Elizabeth a book I was reading. It has some biographical material about Roland de Winter.”

  “That’s the guy who built this old house, isn’t it?” Dakota said, getting up from the table.

  “Mm,” said Jewel, “It’s very fascinating.”

  Dakota moved towards Jewel’s nest in the corner of the room, and Elizabeth was eager to exchange places. As they passed, Elizabeth whispered, “Be careful. She’s on the make.”

  “I can handle her,” Dakota said.

  Bryce pulled a chair out at the poker table. “Come on, Elizabeth, I’ll teach you how to play.”

  “I’m not very good at card games. I think the last game I played was Crazy Eights.”

  “All the better for you. You’ll probably win every hand. Beginner’s luck, they call it. Do you know your poker hands?”

  Elizabeth nodded, and then shook her head, and Bryce nodded and shook right along with her, his smile blossoming into a grin. “Well, we’ll soon remedy that.”

  Bryce’s eyes squinted against the plume of smoke from the half-smoked cigarette clenched between his teeth. The deck was new, and the waxy faces of the cards slid smoothly against each other as he shuffled. Bobby handed Elizabeth a stack of chips from the carousel on the end of the table.

  As he dealt, Bryce explained the betting structure and some basic strategy, with Chet and Bobby adding their two cents worth. Elizabeth looked down at the cards in her hand. She held the Queen and nine of clubs. She was so overwhelmed trying to remember the rules that she quickly forgot all about her unpleasant encounter with Jewel.

  "Fold," Bryce said, laying his cards face down on the table. Bobby tossed a pair of chips into the center of the table, and Chet called with his hand as well.

  Bryce said, "Option to you, Elizabeth. Do you want to check or raise?"

  It was all Greek to her. Elizabeth looked to Bryce for help, but all he did was shrug, a look of satisfied amusement on his face.

  “Come on, we don’t have all night.” Bobby fidgeted in his chair

  "I'll check," Elizabeth said. Bobby discarded the top card and turned over the next three cards: Eight of clubs, Queen of diamonds, King of diamonds.

  "Raise," Chet said, glancing at his cards and throwing out four chips.

  "Call," Elizabeth mumbled, adding her chips to the pot. Bobby threw in four chips as well.

  Bobby tossed the top card onto the pile and turned over a ten of clubs. Chet checked to Elizabeth. Elizabeth checked to Bobby. Bobby checked a
s well and flipped over the last card, the Jack of clubs. Elizabeth was lost.

  Chet threw in his last eight chips and eyed Elizabeth impatiently. Reluctantly, she counted out eight more chips to call. Bryce winked at Bobby. Bobby called and Bryce said, "Okay, let's see them."

  Bobby proudly turned over his cards, an Ace high straight. Chet shook his head in disgust.

  Elizabeth turned her cards over, and the men's eyes grew wide.

  "What did I say about beginner's luck?" Bryce crowed. Elizabeth blinked with confusion, still not seeing it.

  "I don't understand," Elizabeth said. "All I've got is a pair of Queens."

  "Look again, baby." Elizabeth glared at Bobby’s condescending tone.

  Dakota, who had managed to keep her mouth shut as she watched the action, snorted. "A straight flush. And you thought I was lucky."

  Chet picked up the deck of cards and began to shuffle again. Elizabeth shook her head. “Count me out. I don’t understand this game at all. Besides, I’ve got a headache.”

  “Poor baby.” Bryce gripped the back of her neck and rubbed at a pair of pressure points. She knew he meant well, but Elizabeth didn’t want him touching her right now and firmly removed his hand.

  “Hey,” Dakota said, inching her way back toward the table, her eyes glued to the book Jewel had shown her, “this is pretty wild stuff.”

  “What’s that?” Bryce asked.

  Dakota held up the cover. “It’s a book on Roland de Winter and Winterland Studios.”

  “Don’t tell me old de Winter was into all that mumbo jumbo too,” Chet said.

  “As a matter of fact, he was. And for your information Mr. Spaceman, lots of people are into astrology, not just hippies and beatniks. Hell, even the presidents all have personal astrologers on staff with the rest of their advisors. But this cat was into a lot more than just astrology. According to this book Roland de Winter was involved in one of those secret society things.”

  “Like the Skull and Bones?” Chet said.

  “What’s Skull and Bones?” asked Bobby.

  “Fraternity stuff,” Bryce said. “College boys sneaking around abandoned churches with robes and candles, your basic initiation pranks.”

  “Yeah, well what these guys were involved in weren’t exactly your everyday fraternity pranks,” Dakota said. She glanced at the pages of the book as she summarized what she had been reading. “One of de Winter’s cronies was brought up on charges of making sex films with animals.”

  “Gross,” said Bobby.

  “Another was allegedly involved in the white slave trade, underage girls imported from China. Roland de Winter himself was convicted of statutory rape charges brought up by the father of a sixteen-year-old ingénue.”

  “The horrors of Hollywood,” Bryce said. “Happens every day, doesn’t it, Elizabeth?”

  “I’ve heard stories about girls who have been ruined by men like that,” Elizabeth said. “That sort of thing can be very devastating to a young girl when all she wants is to be in pictures and to be adored and admired. Instead she is used and tossed out with the trash.”

  “Men are scum,” Jewel pitched in from her corner in the room. Glances were exchanged around the card table.

  “But listen to this,” Dakota continued, “all during the late 20s and early 30s, there were rumors of strange occurrences going on right here at La Casa del Mar. De Winter thought he had the perfect hideaway out here by the ocean away from the prying eye of the LAPD, but stories started surfacing about things that went on here.” Dakota flipped through the book’s pages, checked the back, and with a frown on her face flipped back to the part she was reading. “No footnotes. It’s hard to tell if someone was just making all this stuff up.”

  “What does it say?” asked Bryce.

  “It says there were reports of drug orgies. Unsubstantiated rumors of young girls who boasted of being invited to parties at La Casa del Mar and then were never seen or heard from again.”

  Bobby bounced in his seat. “I didn’t know they did things like that back then.”

  “Sex wasn’t just invented in the 60s, Bobby.”

  “I meant the drug part.”

  “Half the people in Hollywood were hop heads back in the twenties,” Bryce said. “Isn’t that right, Elizabeth?”

  “There’s lots of scandals involved with all the old film directors,” Jewel said. “Where do you suppose I’ve gotten a lot of my ideas?”

  “And if sex and drugs weren’t enough, they allegedly celebrated Black Mass,” Dakota said.

  “Black Mass? What’s that all about?” Bobby asked.

  “Devil worship,” Dakota said.

  Bryce checked Elizabeth to see how she was handling this conversation. She nodded her head indicating that she was all right with it.

  “People do that stuff?” Bobby said.

  “The terms orgy and devil worship always seem to go hand in hand,” Dakota said. “Look back through history, at the witch trails and the Inquisitions. Most of the time people were just doing what comes natural, but there was always some puritanical power who wielded their authority by turning it into some kind of diabolical depravity.”

  “You see? Nothing to worry about,” Bryce said, more for Elizabeth’s benefit than anyone else’s. “Roland de Winter had a powerful sex drive. He had a taste for young women and I don’t say as I blame him. It makes sense that the local league of decency didn’t care much for his little sex pad out here by the beach, so they trumped up the charges, adding a little deviltry to the mix to get everybody worked up.”

  “Far out,” said Bobby.

  “Wait,” Dakota said. “It gets better. In 1936 Roland de Winter’s wife disappeared.”

  “What do you mean by disappeared?”

  “I mean she was never seen nor heard from again. De Winter never reported her missing, so no formal charges of any sort were ever filed. It says here she had been under psychiatric observation at County Hospital, but that was prior to her disappearance. A few of her close friends were interviewed. They never saw or heard from her again. You can bet your bottom dollar Mrs. de Winter’s friends weren’t too crazy about old Roland, so of course they would suspect him of the worst.”

  “So where’s the happy ending to this story?” said Bryce.

  “There isn’t one. De Winter was convicted of statutory rape and sent to prison. We all know what happens to guys like him in prison, so is it any wonder that he died, quote unquote, a few years later? Winterland Studios went bankrupt. Eventually the film library was purchased by other studios who edited the Winterland logo off the beginning of the films.”

  “Is there anything else about Mrs. de Winter?” Elizabeth asked.

  Dakota flipped through more pages. “Not a word. It’s as if she dropped off the face of the planet.”

  “Maybe he chopped her up and buried her in the wine cellar.”

  “Bobby! That’s a terrible thing to say,” said Elizabeth.

  “I knew there was something creepy about this place,” Chet said.

  “I have a cool idea!” Dakota said. “Let’s have a séance to see if we can contact Mrs. De Winter.”

  “Now you’re going to tell us you’re a medium as well?” Chet said.

  “Of course not, but I’ve been to plenty of séances. I know how it’s done. The important thing is that the people who sit at the séance have an open mind.”

  “Do you think that’s such a good idea so soon after Joan’s death? What if her spirit shows up instead?” Bryce said. Elizabeth knew he was looking out for her, but the comment about Joan struck a bad note with her.

  “I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” she said.