Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

About the only one he could think of was a girl who used to be her stand-in and secretary, a girl named Marion Trenton. He didn’t know where I’d find her.

I said thanks, I’d manage, and he’d hear from me.

Marion Trenton was in the phone book. Finding her was that easy. I called and found her at home. I explained I was a private investigator interested in the Keyes suicide. I’d like to talk to her about it.

She was most obliging and had a very pleasant voice. I might come right over.

She lived in an apartment just north of Hollywood Boulevard. It was a proper arrangement for a working gal — about fifty bucks a month, one room and kitchenette, in-a-door bed. She had it dressed up with lamps and books.

She went with it — vaguely resembling Maxine, I think mostly in build and coloring. She had something of the same kind of turned-up nose. Her eyes were almost as large, and her mouth had the same interesting pout. I was making the comparison with Maxine at her best. This kid didn’t have quite as much, but she’d taken care of it. She was a very modest, quiet girl and spoke with what I suppose was an interesting sort of whisper.

I qualified her right away. She had been Maxine’s closest friend all the way. Her death had been a shock, but not particularly a surprise to Miss Trenton.

“She kept on saying it was a waste of good liquor for her to go on living.”

“Tell me,” I said, trying to keep my eyes off her legs, “was she always a heavy drinker?”

“No. No, she always drank a little, but it didn’t get serious until a couple of years ago,” she replied, plucking at the hem of her skirt.

“About when would you say she began to lose control?” I concentrated on the cigarette in my hand.

Miss Trenton thought a minute. “Just before she and Mr. Burke were divorced.”

“Before?”

“Yes. I recall it was one of the things which broke up their home.”

“There were others?” I asked. “Such as...”

“I’d rather not...” she said, and I let it drop. She wouldn’t be any good to me hostile.

“Look, Miss Trenton,” I urged, “you probably knew Miss Keyes better than anyone else. Would you mind giving me a thumbnail sketch of her life, while you knew her?”

She was sweet about it. In general, Miss Trenton’s story up to the time of Maxine’s divorce from Johnny Clark was a rehash of what he had already told me.

Shortly after the divorce, she made a couple of pictures with a leading man named Wally Burke. The studio publicity department rigged up the usual phony romance, only this time it took. When her divorce was final, she married Burke. They bought a house in the Outpost, and for a time it was love in bloom.

There was, Marion recalled, some whispering at one time that Maxine was falling for her director, a Hungarian named Andre Zolta. But Marion discounted this. They were just good friends. Zolta’s manner might have appeared strange in America, but it was, she assured me, simply continental.

Then Zolta was killed in a hunting accident. He jumped up in Wally’s line of fire when a six point buck crashed out of the underbrush. It happens a hundred times every deer season. That didn’t make the Burkes feel any better about it.

Their marriage started to go to pieces. Maxine was drinking too much. Eventually there was a divorce, and Maxine blew up in the middle of a picture. That cooked her with the industry.

Marion had kept in touch, watched her drink herself destitute. It wasn’t pleasant, but as Marion told me: “Someone had to stand by her, and we had always been such close friends...”

Maxine’s situation had the same appeal to me. “There’s just one more thing.” I asked: “Did she have any enemies? I mean people who really hated her?”

Marion considered for a moment, then tossed me a joker. “There’s only one person I know of who might have felt that way about Maxine,” she replied in her even, husky whisper. “Johnny Clark was terribly bitter when she divorced him. When she remarried, I understand he wrote, threatening both her and Wally.”

Now how was I doing? I started out with a paying client and wound up with an ace suspect.

“Just a minute, Miss Trenton. Did you see that letter?”

“Why yes, I did.”

“When it was received — or recently?”

I was overplaying my interest a little. Miss Trenton’s frown tripped me off. It wasn’t a mean expression, just perplexed.

“When Maxine received it,” she replied, “but I can’t imagine what difference it can make now. She took her own life. It can’t matter what people thought of her.”

She’d figure it out for herself anyway, if she hadn’t already. So I took her into the firm. “Unless,” I suggested, “it wasn’t suicide.”

Her reaction was standard enough. “I didn’t know there was any question about it.”

“When a person dies violently,” I explained, “there’s always a question.” I stood up to leave. “Thanks a million, you’ve been very helpful.”

We said goodbye at her door. She said she would be glad to do whatever she could. I thanked her again and said I might take her up.