Chapter 1: Summer in Los Angeles
My rear view mirror told me the driver behind me was in a terrible mood, and those to my left and right didn't look much happier, but I thought the day had potential. There were enough clouds to keep the sun from landing hard on cars and bouncing into my eyes. The Santa Ana winds had tired themselves out, and the voice on the radio said the latest brush fire was 98% contained. Traffic was moving on the 10, not quickly, but moving, and I had pushed my deep distrust of coincidences so far back in my mind that I had not the slightest sense of impending danger. In fact, I thought it was shaping up to be a better than average Monday.
The radio cut out because my phone rang. The number showing on the dashboard looked familiar, but I couldn't place it. I decided to answer it anyway, and pressed the little button on the steering wheel. I had to say hello twice before I got a response.
"Ms. Graepenteck? This is Bob Ogilvie." He pronounced it GRAPP-in-teck. Almost right, and an understandable mistake, since all our previous communication had been by email.
"Yes, this is Ella Graepenteck."
"Oh, sorry. GRAPE-in-teck."
"No problem. How are you, Mr. Ogilvie?"
"Oh, please, call me Bob. I just want to let you know I'm running a little late. I apologize. Harvey, my partner, should be there, so you can go ahead and have a seat. I won't be long. I'm sorry for any inconvenience."
"It's okay, Bob. Thanks for letting me know."
Bob and his partner were dealers in old Hollywood memorabilia. They were particular specialists in the 1920s. I happen to be related to a minor twenties moviestar called Reginald Ellis, real name Lester Hodelman Jr. He was my first cousin, twice removed. His mother and my great grandmother were sisters. I had never gotten around to exploring his movie career in any depth, but I did once find him in a library collection of 1920s gossip magazines, almost always accompanied by his best friend, another actor called Edmund Walforth, who seemed to generate unsavory rumors wherever he went. Reginald was drunk in public from time to time, but Edmund was seen with gangsters and rabble rousers and many, many different women. He must have been a chronic headache for the studio scandal squashers.
I was meeting Bob for Sara Markis, a new client I had met for the first time the previous Thursday. I had gone that day to her apartment at 1873 Bluebird Avenue, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard in Westwood. A realtor might call the building Parisian style, but it had looked to me like something a few real estate developers dreamed up late at night, in a bar, in 1985. It was four stories, plus an underground entry and garage, and each floor had a different style of ironwork balcony rail. The walls of the top floor were covered in curved terra cotta roof tiles, and the lower floors were stucco the color of wet sand. If you tried hard and had had a few drinks you might be able to imagine the top floor apartments as romantic little artists’ garrets, but inside they were probably generic one or two bedroom condominiums. They would sell for at least $600,000 each, maybe closer to $800,000. I didn’t hold her choice of building against my client. Not much, anyway. Plenty of people would spend more on worse.
Sara's apartment was on the third floor, just below the fake attic. She was a tiny blonde who had not lost any of her youthful energy, despite having reached the age of at least twenty-two. She had her phone in her hand as she answered the door, and she typed away at it with both thumbs while she tilted her head slightly to the right, flashed bright blue eyes briefly at me, smiling, and said, "Hi! Come in! Thanks for coming!"
I followed her into the living/dining area, closing the door behind me, and sat where she indicated, next to her on a wide white sofa with a high, curved back. The whole place was white, the floors, the walls, the countertops, and the upholstery, in shades from snow to ecru. The fabric on the sofa was smooth, with a raised jacquard pattern. It was pretty, on its own, but in that environment it was just debris flying past in a tornado of white.
There was a document on the glass topped coffee table. I pointed at it.
"Is this a copy of the birth certificate?"
She took a moment to finish what she was typing and then put her phone down on the table.
"Yes! You can go ahead and look at it. You can even have that one. I have another copy, and my grandmother has more. Her birth name was Lily, which is such a pretty name, but her real name, I mean, the name she grew up with, the name her parents, her adoptive parents gave her is Emily, which is also a nice name, but it's weird to think she might have been Lily, you know? But anyway, yeah, you can see it there."
I picked it up. Sure enough, it was a birth certificate that indicated that Lily Frances Walsh was born in 1926 to Ellen Marie Walsh and Edmund Walforth. Lily had her mother’s last name rather than her father’s, because her parents were not married, but the fact that his name appeared on the certificate indicated he officially acknowledged parentage, and was most likely present at the hospital at the time of birth. This document warranted careful study. I was able to examine it in silence for a full two seconds before Sara started speaking again.
"Yeah, so, like I said, we already know all about her birth mother, about Ellen, but no one has been able to find out anything about her birth father, just nothing at all, and it would be so great to have that, because she's going to be ninety this year, my grandmother, and it would just be such a great gift to give, to be able to tell her about her father, you know, who he was, something about his family, where he came from, that sort of thing.”
"Yes, well, I hope I can find that information for you. If this Edmund Walforth is the same one I know a little about, then I can understand why it has been hard to track him down."
"You said he was a moviestar? How amazing is that! I mean, wow!”
"A minor moviestar. He was never very famous, so he probably didn't show up in regular newspapers, just industry publications. Also, Edmund Walforth probably wasn't his real name, so he most likely wouldn't be under that name in census records or other ordinary documentation."
"But that name is on the birth certificate."
"Yes, and that may mean it is not the same person, or that he legally changed his name. There could be a number of explanations."
"But you can find out, right? I mean, what the explanation is?"
"I can do my best. No genealogist can guarantee results. I will try every way I can think of, but you do need to understand that you will be paying me for my time and expertise, not for the answers to your questions. It's possible the documentation you're seeking doesn't exist."
She stared at me for a moment, her face blank and her head still. I had never seen eyes that were such a bright blue, at least not in person. I wondered if she might be related to Paul Newman. She blinked and went back to her previous animated state.
"Well, you're the first one who knew anything about this moviestar guy, which seems like a pretty good sign to me, so I say let's do it!"
I had already done some preliminary online searching and found no one named Edmund Walforth in the Los Angeles area in the 1920s, which supported the hypothesis that it wasn't his real name, but if that were true, why was it on the birth certificate? It was an intriguing question that seemed likely to lead to more intriguing questions. Experience has made me suspicious of coincidences, and the fact that I happened to have a personal, if distant, connection to the exact person Sara was looking for certainly was one, but the possibilities were compelling. I couldn't resist. I was hired.
The next day, Friday, I had discovered Bob Ogilvie and sent him an email. He claimed to have a large number of documents belonging to California Pictures, the long defunct studio that had employed both Edmund Walforth and Reginald Ellis. I was hoping there might be something there that would give Edmund's real name, or at least a clue to where he came from. I wrote Bob that I had a client who believed she was related to Edmund Walforth, and if I could prove the connection, said client might be interested in purchasing things related to him, although I couldn't guarantee it. That was good enough for Bob, and we set a meeting for 10:30 on Monday. That was where I was driving that morning, thinking it was looking like a pretty good day. I probably had a smile on my face.
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