Maddie Ellis and the Malibu Movie Colony is an old-fashioned mystery serial set during the end of the silent movie era. All previous chapters are available on our website: https://topanganewtimes.com/storyland/
Maddie gazed critically at her reflection in the bathroom mirror the next morning. She looked for any sign that she might be turning into the sort of person her former friends had become. Her dark hair was a bit too long for the dictates of fashion, but the face that looked back at her was still her own. “Settle down,” indeed. She made a face at herself and stuck out her tongue defiantly. She had no intention of taking up bridge or conformity, but she did need a haircut.
The downside of bobbed hair was that it needed frequent cutting. The look demanded of “the new woman” was a boon for hairdressers and a bane for fashionable ladies. Maddie had administered her first bob with the kitchen shears at the age of seventeen and never looked back, but her hair was unruly and grew fast. Her last trim had been in London. Maddie’s neighbor, Bebe Daniels, who always looked impeccable, recommended her own hairdresser to Maddie. That was how she found herself seated next to Lulu Desmond at a salon in Santa Monica that afternoon.
“Oh, Miss Ellis!” she exclaimed. “I’m getting a wave. So tedious, but necessary.”
Maddie hadn’t recognized her at first, because Lulu’s head was covered in curlers, each attached to an electrical flex and suspended from a ring hung from the ceiling. She looked like a modern-day Medusa, with her head covered in mechanical snakes, but this was “The Process” that created perfectly waved or marcelled hair.
Maddie had neither the need nor the inclination for such a thing. Her hair was naturally curly and her patience with the more exacting dictates of Madame Fashion limited, but she gave Lulu a sympathetic smile.
“Il faut souffrir d’être belle,” she said.
“So true,” Lulu sighed. “I like being beautiful, but I simply hate suffering, don’t you? Bebe told me you were not amused by that taradiddle I told Polly Pollard. I am sorry. I thought it was a laugh.”
“It was rather a shock,” Maddie said. “But it’s too late to do anything about it now.”
“At least you came off better than Billy and I did,” Lulu said. “‘Childhood sweethearts,’ and ‘love’s young dream.’ Simply deadly!”
“I haven’t seen it yet,” Maddie confessed. “I’m not sure I want to.”
“Oh you must!” Lulu exclaimed. “It’s a scream. But I mean it. I owe you one for not telling Billy about Johnny and me at the coffee shop. Billy’s a good friend, a real pal—we’ve known each other for ages—but he has an awful temper. I’m frightened of him sometimes.”
“I would have thought Johnny was the one with the temper,” Maddie said, thinking of how he had behaved towards Isabel Flores, and towards poor innocent Clarice Auclair.
“Oh no! Johnny’s a lamb. There’s no harm in him. I’m crazy about him. I couldn’t believe my good luck when he broke it off with Isabel for me. I admit he’s been moody since then, but I cheer him up. I always do. I just haven’t been able to tell Billy. That’s why I didn’t want Billy to know you’d seen Johnny and me out on the town together. The party we went to that night we met you was a bust, anyway. We didn’t stay long.”
“What happened?” Maddie inquired.
“We were promised a genuine den of iniquity,” Lulu said with relish. “But it was all very dull. Just a lot of people lying about on the floor in a dusty old room in an empty house, and such a drive. Right out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Whose house was it?” Maddie asked.
“Oh, nobody’s,” Lulu was dismissive. “Those sorts of things move around, you know, from place to place. That’s part of the fun. I’ll let you know next time,” she invited. “It’s all word of mouth. But you mustn’t tell Billy. He doesn’t like me going to places like that. He wouldn’t like it if he knew I went with Johnny.”
Maddie reflected that Billy Worthington almost certainly did know. How could he not after Lulu’s behavior at the beach party where she first encountered them?
“This one was different,” Lulu was saying. “It wasn’t the usual people. It was a flop, and it looked like a flop house.” She wrinkled her nose fastidiously. “It smelled like one, too. So disappointing. I like sweet dreams as much as the next girl, if you know what I mean, but there wasn’t anything to drink, or any music, or any comfortable furniture—or any furniture except for an old broken down sofa and some musty old pillows. I was hoping for something livelier, if you know what I mean. Something fun.” Lulu giggled.
“It sounds like it might have gotten to be a hot time later,” Maddie said.
“The fire?” Lulu said. “I didn’t hear about it until later. We were long gone by then. Johnny knows a sublime place in town with a jazz band and real champagne. We went there instead and danced all night. It was heaven. No one dances like Johnny, and when he kisses me…” she shut her eyes and smiled.
Maddie was spared further details by the arrival of the hairdresser.
“You have some gray hairs, madame,” he told her, disapprovingly. “I can touch them up for you. It would not take long.”
“No thank you,” Maddie said. A few gray hairs did not trouble her. She never bothered with hair dye. Gentlemen might prefer blondes, according to the irrepressible Anita Loos, but Maddie liked her hair the way it was. Her dark curls were an inheritance from her father, who had not lived long enough for his hair to turn gray. She was planning to embrace the experience. When the haircut was finished she shook her curls experimentally, admiring the hairdresser’s handiwork in the mirror. She tipped him generously, said goodbye to Lulu, and left.
Maddie spent a pleasant afternoon shopping for a new dress to replace the lovely persimmon-colored one that was ruined during the rescue of Clarice Auclair. She found one in a color described as “California poppy” that was perfect. The helpful saleswoman tried to interest her in a hairband that would “perfectly complement the dress.”
It was pretty. It reminded Maddie of the poppy crown worn by the eponymous heroine of L. Frank Baum’s book Ozma of Oz. These poppies were made of silk and were white, not red like the ones in the book. Maddie had loved the Oz books growing up, and had read them to her younger siblings so many times she had whole passages memorized. “If the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever,” she said to herself, and that brought to mind Lulu’s description of people lying about dreaming. “Sweet dreams,” Lulu had said.
Poppies—real ones as well as those that grew in Oz—had the power to put people to sleep. That was because they contained opium. Opium? Maddie wondered. Opium that was, perhaps, smuggled in cocoa tins? Opium at a party where sleepers lay dreaming in an empty house? She wondered if she should mention this line of thought to Lieutenant McCay. She probably should, but how could she do so without incriminating Lulu? And why did that matter? If illicit activities were happening, wasn’t it important to report all of the potential evidence, even if it implicated someone one knew? By her own account, Lulu left without participating in whatever was taking place.
Maddie found she was still holding the hairband. She handed it back to the saleswoman with a shake of her head, but she bought the dress, rejoicing that she had the resources to do so.
Maddie stopped for an early supper at the old seafood shack by the Santa Monica Pier. She used to take her little sister Anna here sometimes, when it was just the two of them against the world. They would eat clam chowder and walk to the end of the pier to watch the boats and the gulls and talk about the future.
Maddie ate clam chowder alone with her memories. Neither of their futures were the ones they had prophesied for themselves, but Maddie found—to her surprise—that she was happy. She felt a wave of contentment and belonging. She had come home.
The weather was mild and the beach was a popular destination. The pier was thronged with pleasure-seekers and the air smelled of popcorn, hot cotton candy, creosote, fish, and saltwater. She walked to the end and back again, lingering to listen to a jug band. The jug player was a big man with an earthenware vinegar jug. There was also a pair of tall, thin men who must be brothers. They played the washtub bass and the ukulele, while the chanteuse sang and played the washboard, with thimbles on her fingers. They sang the “Coney Island Washboard Blues,” and the “Vo Do De-O Blues” and the “Memphis Jug Band Blues.”
Maddie slipped a dollar bill into their tip jar. They were awfully good, she thought. Their sign said “we play for food.” She hoped that would help them buy some supper that night. The chanteuse was crooning “Stealin’, stealin’, pretty mama don’t you tell on me. I’m stealin’ back to my same old used to be,” as Maddie turned away. She ran right into a man and was almost knocked off her feet.
“Miss Ellis, I’m so sorry!” He exclaimed, taking her arm to steady her. “I didn’t see you there. Didn’t mean to mow you down.”
Maddie found herself looking into the candid blue eyes of Billy Worthington.
“Here, let’s get out of the crowd before you are mowed down again. What can I do to apologize for my appalling clumsiness?” He offered her a cigarette. Maddie declined.
“Don’t smoke? Never do? Wish I didn’t,” he said. “It’s so hard to stop once you start. What is your vice, Miss Ellis?” He smiled at her.
“Coffee,” Maddie replied promptly. Her real vice was curiosity, and at the moment she was wondering why the charming and genial Billy Worthington had run into her and what he was doing there. He was dressed for an evening out, so perhaps he was headed to the La Monica Ballroom again.
“Coffee? That’s not much of a vice,” he said, still laughing.
“You have no idea, Mr. Worthington,” she said.
“You haven’t seen Lulu, have you?” Billy asked.
“I have,” Maddie said. “She was getting her hair done. Are you meeting her?”
“Just a bit of dancing and perhaps a drink or two, you know,” Billy said. “You’re welcome to join us.”
Maddie thanked him and declined. “It’s a long drive home,” she told him.
“I envy you,” he said. “I’ve been wanting a Malibu beach house of my own for ages. You’ll let me know if you hear of a vacancy won’t you?”
Maddie said she would and they parted with a cordial handshake.
It was dark by the time she made her way back to her roadster. She walked quickly, the feeling of contentment dispelled by a growing twinge of anxiety. It was too late to stop at the Constable’s Office on the way home, but she wrote him a note when she got home describing her conversation with Lulu about the “den of iniquity.” She was careful not to name names, but it seemed important to let McCay know the details.
The lieutenant responded the following day with a note of his own that said, “We may have a line on something out there. Lay low and stay out of it.”
That was hardly comforting. How could one stay out of something when that something involved the house one was living in?
Maddie put the note in her pocket and went out into the sunlight, careful to lock the door behind her.
