Page 92 of The Happy Month
The other thing that was immediately obvious was that he liked to doodle. Quite a few of the pages had doodles in the corner. Cubes, spheres, cones, thatching, the occasional word in three-dimensional lettering. On a few pages, there would be a tree with a branch that crossed the top of the page and roots that ran across the bottom.
There were very few meetings in the mornings, but many in the afternoon. I suspected that meant he did his creative work in the morning. Most of the meetings had a person’s name, while others said things like PRODUCTIONMEETING, BUDGET MEETING with the title of a film, likeLadies Night OutorPinch Hitter.
I was flipping through the summer of 1948 when I noticed that he’d sometimes put a P in the corner of a page. He’d often draw a box around the letter and then turn the box into a cube. Was the P for Patrick? As I turned through the pages, as summer became fall, there were more P’s. And then, P&V. Also in a cube. In October, there was the first IP & VG. Ivan and Patrick; Vera and Gigi.
That told me something I hadn’t known. Vera’s relationship with Gigi began in the fall of 1948. Did it continue right up to her death a year later?
Before moving on to 1949, I looked through Melchor’s appointments again. A lot of meetings were crossed out, as though were canceled. I wondered if he was having problems because he was gay? That didn’t seem right, though. People always acted like Hollywood accepted gays in background creative positions like set director. As long as he didn’t get arrested or announce he was gay in the newspaper, Ivan would have been fine.
Of course, there could have been other reasons he was having trouble at work. Not to mention, the cancellations might have had nothing to do with him. It could be that the movies were cancelled and not his working on them. I didn’t know enough about film history to be sure.
I zeroed in on the holidays. Thanksgiving, the twenty-fifth, was blank. But on the following day, the twenty-sixth, there was a list of names. The first three were Patrick, Vera and Gigi. There were eight other names. All first names. Six men, two women. There was a note written on a pink pad that said WHILE YOU WERE AWAY at the top. In the same handwriting that appeared often in the diary it said,Caterer called to confirm Friday.Will arrive at ten.
It was likely, Patrick and Vera were with his family that Thursday. His sister had said it was possible she met Vera that day. That’s why there was nothing on Melchor’s calendar for the holiday and why he gave his Thanksgiving dinner the day after.
Turning to December, I noticed there were several days on which he’d written IP & VG. They’d double-dated many times. On Christmas Day there was a note that said, ‘Portrait of Jennie– Skip.’ I knew that movie from when I was a kid. It played on WGN all the time. There was a P on Christmas Eve. They’d gotten to spend that part of the holiday together and it looked like Patrick had Christmas dinner with his family while his boyfriend went to a movie with a friend—Skip. On New Year’s Eve there was a notation that said ‘Cinegrill’ along with ‘IP & VG.’ Had the two couples gone dancing? It made sense. Ivan and Patrick wouldn’t have been able to go alone.
I turned to 1949. It was more of the same. The two couples continued to go out with each other. That made me wonder… Rocky Havoc said that Gigi was married. Why was she so available? Were she and her husband separated? Or was she actually not married at all?
I turned to the end of September, September thirtieth. A Friday. At the top of the page there was a notation in the corner: ‘IP & VG Malibu.’ Melchor had no meetings that afternoon. I understood exactly what that meant. The two couples had planned to spend the weekend in Malibu somewhere. Except, they didn’t. Vera was found dead in Pasadena on Sunday morning October 2, 1949, having been killed sometime the day or night before. If she went to Malibu on Friday afternoon, she’d have needed to leave that night or the next morning.
I thought back to my conversation with GeorgiaDawson. She’d talked about Vera’s last day at work. She said they couldn’t wait to leave. If Vera had left early, she would have mentioned that—wouldn’t she? I might need to talk to her again.
I decided to assume that Vera and Gigi did not go to Malibu. So, did Patrick and Ivan? There were no notations for October first and second. On the third and the fourth, all of the appointments after Monday at noon had been canceled by Melchor’s secretary, crossed out and the word ‘cancelled’ written beneath. Flipping through the following week, I saw that the secretary had rescheduled many of the meetings.
Melchor must have heard about Vera’s murder around noon on the third. He’d taken the rest of that day and the following day off, presumably to be with Patrick, and possibly Gigi if they were true friends. I flipped forward a couple of months. I didn’t see any G’s though. But then, there weren’t any P’s either. The alphabet soup appeared to have disappeared.
I sat there for a few minutes attempting to look at this from every angle. If Melchor and Patrick were involved in Vera’s murder, they could have killed her in Malibu and dumped her body in Pasadena.
But that didn’t make sense for a lot of reasons. If you kill someone in Malibu there are dozens of places to dump the body much closer than Pasadena. And… in 1949 there would have been dozens more since the city wasn’t as built up.
Also, there was Gigi. If Melchor and Patrick did kill Vera, where was Gigi? Did she watch? Did she run away? Why did she never tell? And how does any of this fit with Rocky Havoc’s belief that it was Gigi’s husband whokilled Vera?
Whatdidmake sense was that Vera and Gigi either didn’t go or left early because of Gigi’s husband. That then resulted in Vera’s death somehow.
I went back to 1948 and flipped to the address section in the back. Quickly, I saw that it was not meant to be a complete address book. In fact, there were just four pages, each with the word ‘telephone’ at the top of the page.
It was easy to see that most of the names were professional contacts. Neither Vera nor Gigi nor even Patrick were there. I scanned through and found Skip Harkness. TR2-7998. I figured this was the Skip who Melchor spent Christmas Day at the movies with. I wondered if he might work with Melchor. Quickly, I flipped through the pages and eventually found a meeting: ‘Properties,Suspect the Night, Skip H.’ That answered that. Skip did props on a movie they did together.
I went back to the day after Thanksgiving dinner and checked to see if any of the names appeared in the back. I found another: ‘Annette Kohler SY5-7987.’ Skimming through, I saw that she had costume meetings with Melchor on several films.
It was after one and my stomach was growling like a circus animal. I took the tub up to the desk and asked Mrs. Brewster if they could copy all of November and December of 1948, September 30 through October 4, 1949, and the complete address sections from the back of each book.
“That’s probably fifty or sixty pages. It’s a dollar a page,” she told me.
“Do you take credit cards?”
“We do.”
“Then there’s no problem.”
I’d be passing the cost onto the Karpinski brothers. Both of whom charged around two hundred andfifty an hour.
“You mentioned a professor at UCLA who’s researching Melchor, can you give me his name?”
“Oh,” she said, seeming surprised. “I’m not sure. I’ve not been asked a question like that before. I’m going to say no, just to be safe.”
“Okay,” I said. I was already sure I could find him on my own.
