The Widow on Mulholland

February, 1948. Margaret Ashford drives to Jack Malone's office at eight-fifteen in the morning with a prepared list of names and two days to find her daughter. Claire was supposed to be married on Saturday. She had a dress fitting on Thursday morning, left the shop at half past ten, and never came home. Her car was found two miles away. Her purse was still inside.

Detective Santos says adults aren't missing persons for forty-eight hours. Margaret Ashford says her daughter doesn't leave her purse in a locked car.

She's right.

The Widow on Mulholland is the fourth episode of [Series Name], an original old-time radio drama in the tradition of classic noir. Each case stands alone - no need to start at Episode 1.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

The Widow on Mulholland, an old-time radio drama in the style of Philip Marlowe, February in Los Angeles. The city had decided it was spring, the way it periodically did without consulting the calendar, and the jacaranda trees on Figaroa were making their annual argument in purple. I had the window open and a cup of coffee that was still hot, which was a good sign for the morning. I was reviewing my case files, which is what I called reading the newspaper, when I was trying to feel professional about it. The woman who came through my door at 8 15 did not knock. People who do not knock are either very confident or very frightened. In my experience, the most frightening ones are both. Her name was Margaret Ashford. I knew it before she told me because I had seen her photograph in the society pages three or four times over the years. She was the kind of woman whose name appeared in the society pages the way certain mountains appeared on maps, simply because they were there and had always been there. Widow of Charles Ashford, the shipping man, home on Mulholland Drive, two children, a son in Boston, and a daughter named Claire, who was, according to the last notice I'd seen, engaged to be married to a young attorney named Robert Ellison. She sat down without being asked, and folded her hands on her purse and looked at me with the expression of a woman who has spent forty years being competent and has arrived at a problem that competence alone cannot solve.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

My daughter is missing. Her name is Claire. She is twenty-six years old. She was to be married on Saturday. Today is Thursday.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

Two days.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

She was last seen yesterday morning at 10 o'clock. She had a fitting for her dress at a shop on Wilshire. The seamstress confirms she arrived, had the fitting, left at half past ten. She was expected home for lunch. She did not come home for lunch. She did not telephone. Her car was found this morning on a side street in Silver Lake, two miles from the dress shop. Locked, her purse inside, her keys inside.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

Has anyone contacted the police?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Detective Santos at the Syndicate Street Station was very courteous. He took a report. He told me that adults are not considered missing persons until forty-eight hours have elapsed, and that there was no evidence of foul play, and that young women occasionally need time to themselves before significant life events. He is not wrong that young women occasionally need time to themselves. Claire is not that kind of young woman.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

Tell me about Claire.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Claire is not a woman who misses appointments. She is not a woman who leaves her purse in a locked car. She is not a woman who disappears two days before her wedding without telling anyone where she is going or why. She is organized, deliberate, and considerate of other people's time. These are not my opinions. They are observable facts about her character accumulated over twenty-six years.

SPEAKER_04 2:50

And the wedding itself, was she happy about it?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

She was. I want to be precise about that, Mr. Malone, because I understand why you're asking. Claire chose Robert. She was not pressured. She is not an unhappy woman running from a life she didn't choose. Whatever has happened to her, it is not that.

SPEAKER_04 3:10

Tell me about Robert Ellison.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

He is twenty-nine. He practices corporate law at Beaumont and Cross, a firm downtown. He comes from a good family in Pasadena. He is intelligent and presentable, and Claire loves him. I find him pleasant and slightly opaque. But that is not unusual in young men of his type, and I do not consider it diagnostic.

SPEAKER_04 3:31

Beaumont and Cross.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

You recognize the name.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

It came up in a case recently. Different context. Where is Robert now?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

At the house. He arrived last night when Claire didn't come home. He has been he is very distressed. He wants to help, and there is nothing for him to do, which is difficult for a man of his temperament.

SPEAKER_04 3:51

I'll need Claire's address book if she kept one. Names of close friends, anyone she might have confided in, her routine for the last two weeks, and the name of the dress shop.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

I anticipated the question.

SPEAKER_04 4:02

I looked at Margaret Ashford and thought that she was probably the most formidable person who had ever sat in my office, including the ones who had brought guns. She had a missing daughter in two days, and she had shown up at 8 15 in the morning with a prepared list, because panic was a luxury she had decided she could not afford. I'll call you by noon with whatever I have.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

She is a good person, Mr. Malone. Whatever she has found herself in the middle of, she does not deserve to be there.

SPEAKER_04 4:28

I'll find her. I put on my coat and went to Silver Lake to look at a locked car with a purse inside it, because that was where Claire Ashford had last been, and the beginning of a thing is usually the best place to start understanding it. The car was a 1946 Ford Coop, dark blue, parked on a residential street called Landa in Silver Lake, two miles from the dress shop and half a mile from the reservoir. Santos had sent a patrol unit to look at it the previous evening, and they had looked at it and concluded that a locked car with a purse inside it on a quiet residential street was not a crime scene, which was technically accurate and professionally incomplete. I stood on the sidewalk and looked at the block, quiet, residential, the kind of street where people knew their neighbors' cars and would notice one that didn't belong. I knocked on the door of the nearest house. The woman who answered had lived on Landa Street for eleven years and knew every car on the block. She had noticed the blue ford the previous morning around eleven o'clock. She had noticed it because it was parked in front of her house, which was where her sister parked when she visited, and she had looked out to see if her sister had arrived unexpectedly. It was not her sister. She had also noticed, because she was a woman who noticed things, that the young woman who got out of the ford had stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking at something across the street before she walked away. She had gone east toward the reservoir. She had not come back. I walked east toward the reservoir. It was a pleasant morning, and the path around the water was occupied by the kind of people who were occupied with it at nine in the morning. Dog walkers, a man reading on a bench, two women talking with the focused energy of a conversation that had been ongoing for some time. I showed Claire's photograph, which Margaret had included with the prepared list, to everyone I encountered. The man on the bench had seen her. He was a retired school teacher named Hoffman, who came to the reservoir every morning at ten and read for two hours. He had seen a young woman matching Claire's description sitting on the bench at the far end of the path at approximately eleven the previous morning. She had been sitting with another woman, older, dark haired, well dressed. They had talked for perhaps half an hour. The conversation had not appeared friendly exactly, but it had not appeared unfriendly. It had appeared, in Hoffman's words, serious. The other woman had left first. Claire had sat alone for a few minutes after looking at the water. Then she had walked north, away from her car. I walked north, three blocks north of the reservoir, on a street called Kenilworth, there was a Catholic church called St. Anthony's. It was the kind of small neighborhood church that had been there longer than most of the neighborhood around it, quiet and slightly worn in the way of places that have absorbed a great deal of human difficulty over the years. The side door was open. I went in.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

Good morning. Can I help you?

SPEAKER_04 7:13

Father, my name is Jack Malone. I'm looking for a young woman who may have come in here yesterday morning. Her name is Claire Ashford.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Mr. Malone, sit down, if you would.

SPEAKER_04 7:25

I sat in a pew near the front, and Father Gabriel sat in the pew across the aisle, and the church was very quiet around us in the way that churches were quiet, which was a different kind of quiet from other buildings.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

I am going to be careful about what I tell you, because some of what I know I know in a context that requires my discretion. But I can tell you that a young woman came to St. Anthony's yesterday morning, and that she was frightened. Not in danger, she told me. But frightened.

SPEAKER_04 7:55

Did she tell you why?

SPEAKER_03 7:56

She had learned something about someone close to her. She needed time to decide what to do with what she knew about Robert Ellison. She asked me if she could stay for a while to think. I told her she could stay as long as she needed. She stayed for perhaps an hour, and then she left. She told me she was going to see someone. A woman she trusted.

SPEAKER_04 8:22

Did she say who?

SPEAKER_03 8:23

She said a name. Nora. She said Nora would know what to do.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

I thanked Father Gabriel and went back to my car and looked at Margaret's list. There was a Nora on it. Nora Vale, listed as Claire's closest friend since college, an address in Los Feliz, a telephone number. I drove to Los Feliz. Nora Vail ran a small architectural firm out of the ground floor of a craftsman house on Rowena, which was the kind of professional arrangement that worked if you were good enough that clients came to you rather than the other way around. She was. I knew her work vaguely. She'd designed two buildings in Los Feliz that had been written up in the papers, the kind of buildings that looked like they had always been there even though they hadn't. She answered the door before I knocked, which meant she had been watching for someone, and when she saw it was me, her expression went through three things in quick succession relief, wariness, and a decision.

SPEAKER_05 9:16

You're the detective Margaret Hired.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

Jack Malone. Is Claire here?

SPEAKER_05 9:20

Yes. She doesn't want to be found, but she needs to be.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Claire Ashford was sitting at Nora's kitchen table with a cup of tea she wasn't drinking, and she looked up when I came in with the expression of a woman who has been dreading and expecting this moment in equal measure. She was younger than her photograph. Photographs of composed people always make them look older, and she had the particular exhaustion of someone who has been awake with a difficult thing for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

You called her.

SPEAKER_05 9:48

I called your mother's detective. Your mother's worried sick, Claire. Two days before your wedding.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

I know. I know she is. Mr. Malone. Sit down. I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_04 9:58

Take your time.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Three weeks ago, I found a document in Robert's briefcase. I was not going through his things. He had asked me to get a file from his case before he went into a meeting, and I found it by accident underneath the file he wanted. It was a letter from a man named Gerald Cross.

SPEAKER_04 10:16

Gerald Cross.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Do you know the name?

SPEAKER_04 10:18

Cross was arrested last month on municipal corruption charges, and he's awaiting trial.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

The letter was dated eight months ago. It was addressed to Robert. It referenced payments, specific amounts, specific dates, routed through Robert's firm. Robert was the attorney of record for three of the shell companies Cross used to move the contract money.

SPEAKER_04 10:41

He knew.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

He knew. He structured the arrangements. The letter is Cross was thanking him for his discretion, for his continued partnership. I took the letter. Robert doesn't know I have it.

SPEAKER_04 10:54

Where is it now?

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Here. I've been carrying it since I took it because I didn't know what else to do with it.

SPEAKER_04 11:01

I looked at the letter without touching it. It was what she said it was. Specific, damning, the kind of document that a careful man should have destroyed and hadn't, because careful men sometimes believe they are more untouchable than they are. Robert Ellison's name was in the third paragraph, unambiguous. The woman you met at the reservoir yesterday, who was she?

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Her name is Patricia Fitch, Warren Fitch's wife. She contacted me two days ago, said she needed to speak with me privately. I thought I didn't know what to think. I went. She told me that Robert had approached Warren Fitch six months ago after I had become engaged to Robert. She said Robert had made it clear that a connection to the Ashford family would be useful to the operation. She said Robert had told Warren Fitch that the marriage was a part of the plan. She also said that when Cross was arrested, Robert began making arrangements, different arrangements. She didn't know the specifics, but Warren Fitch told her that Robert was managing his exposure. That there were people who could be made to look more responsible for things than they were.

SPEAKER_04 12:17

Did she say who?

SPEAKER_02 12:18

She said my mother's name.

SPEAKER_04 12:20

Claire, I need the letter, and I need you to stay here with Nora until I tell you it's safe to move. Can you do that?

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 12:28

Nobody comes to this door until you hear from me or from Detective Santos. Nobody. I've got a deadbolt and a telephone. We'll be fine. I went back to my car with the letter in my inside pocket and thought about Robert Ellison sitting in Margaret Ashford's house on Mulholland, very distressed, with nothing to do. A young attorney from Pasadena with a good family and a pleasant manner, and the particular opacity that Margaret had noticed and filed away. A man who had looked at Claire Ashford and seen two things at once, and had been careful enough to make one of them real so that no one would look too hard at the other. I called Santos from a payphone on Rowena. Santos listened without interrupting, which was one of the things I appreciated about Santos. He had the discipline to wait until he had all of it before he decided what to do with it. When I finished, there was a pause of about four seconds.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Beaumont and Cross. Ellison's firm.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

Henry Beaumont is already cooperating on the cross case. If Ellison was running the Shell Company paperwork, Beaumont knows it. He'll want to get ahead of it.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

The Ashford angle. Using the wedding as cover for moving money internationally.

SPEAKER_04 13:33

Margaret Ashford doesn't know anything about it. She needs to be told before Ellison realizes the letter is gone.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

I'll go to Mulholland myself. Keep Ellison there until I arrive.

SPEAKER_04 13:43

Santos. He may already know the letter is missing. He's had 24 hours.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Then I'll drive fast. Malone. Good work finding the girl.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

She mostly found herself. I just followed the thread. Robert Ellison was arrested at the Ashford House on Mulholland Drive at 2 15 on Friday afternoon. Santos told me later that he had been very composed about it. The way certain people were composed when the thing they had been dreading finally arrived and turned out to be no worse than they had imagined. He had not run. He had asked for his attorney, which was a reasonable request from a man who was himself an attorney, and understood that the next several years of his life were going to be conducted primarily in courtrooms. Henry Beaumont, who was already cooperating and looking for additional cooperation to offer, confirmed the Shell Company arrangements within the hour. Patricia Fitch's account was corroborated by documents in Warren Fitch's home office that Santos had had a warrant to search for three weeks and had finally found a reason to execute. I went to Nora Vail's house on Rowena at six in the evening and told Claire that it was done. She listened to the whole of it without expression, in the careful way of a person managing the distance between information and feeling, and when I finished, she was quiet for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

He was kind to me. I want you to know I'm not. I know what he was doing. I understand it. But he was kind to me. I don't know what to do with that.

SPEAKER_04 15:06

You don't have to do anything with it right now.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

My mother is going to be I don't know what she's going to be.

SPEAKER_04 15:12

She's going to be relieved you're safe, and then she's going to be angry at Robert Ellison for approximately the rest of her natural life, in that order.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

That sounds right. Thank you, Mr. Malone.

SPEAKER_04 15:22

Margaret Ashford called my office the next morning, Saturday, the day that would have been the wedding. She did not say anything about that. She thanked me for finding Claire in the precise and unhurried way she did everything, and she told me my invoice had already been mailed. Then she said one more thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

She is home. She is safe. That is the only thing that matters today. The rest will sort itself out. Things do, eventually. Even the bad ones.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

Yes, ma'am, they do. I hung up the telephone and looked out my window at the jacaranda trees on Figaroa, which were still making their purple argument and would be for another few weeks before they thought better of it. Claire Ashford was home. Robert Ellison was in custody. Santos had his paperwork. Margaret Ashford had her daughter. Two days. That was all it had taken and all it had cost. I thought about Robert Ellison, who had sat across from Claire every day for two years and been two things simultaneously, and about how that required a particular kind of discipline that I had always found more frightening than simple malice. Malice you could see coming. Discipline wore better suits. I poured myself a drink I hadn't earned yet and decided to count finding her before Saturday as sufficient. Outside, Los Angeles went on doing what it did, it always did.