Murder Under the Palms Read Online Free Page A

would be wonderful publicity to have the actress who wore these jewels in the movie wearing them again at our party.”
    “I’m afraid I look a little different now,” Charlotte remarked. She had been twenty then, younger than Dede was now. Young, and still so innocent. Though she had already made two films, it was her role in The Normandie Affair that would make her a star.
    “Not much, if I may be so bold as to comment,” Paul said as he fastened the necklace around her neck.
    “Thank you,” she replied. Though she was not without wrinkles, her skin was well preserved, and she considered the fact that time had treated her face so well as one of the great benisons of her life.
    The necklace was of a flexible openwork geometric design of diamonds in various cuts mounted in platinum and accented with cabochon rubies. From the center hung a single cabochon ruby the size of a small hen’s egg. There was also a diamond and ruby bracelet to match.
    “I remember this necklace very well,” said Connie, who had met Charlotte earlier in 1939, just after they had both arrived in Hollywood. She looked over at Charlotte. “It brings back memories.”
    “It certainly does,” said Charlotte as she gazed at her reflection in the gilded mirror.
    Though the passage to Europe had been memorable enough for a twenty-year old—it had been her first ocean voyage—it was the passage back that was the stuff of Charlotte’s memories. It had been her own private Normandie affair. She was married; he was married. And despite their youth—he was only a few years older than she—both marriages were already on the rocks. Her marriage to her hometown sweetheart had started to fall apart when she’d gone to Hollywood the previous year, and by the summer of 1939 was as good as dead. He had been separated for a year, but was planning to go back to his wife to give the marriage one last try. His name was Eddie Norwood, and he was a piano player with the ship’s orchestra: the George Thurmond Orchestra. Their affair had lasted four glorious days, days that she would remember for the rest of her life. Four days, twelve hours, and twenty-eight minutes, to be precise. It was the first time she had really been in love, and there was to be only one other real love in her life, though she had been married four times and had had more lovers than she cared to admit to. It might have lasted longer, had the war not intervened. Instead, it had ended up being “just one of those fabulous flings.” “Just One of Those Things” had had been their song. She remembered now how he had played it for her on the baby grand piano in the Café-Grill as the sun rose in the east on their first morning out. They had been up all night. She had been wearing the Carrier necklace, which she would be returning to New York for display at The World’s Fair. After they arrived home she never saw him again, though their paths had crossed, like ships in the night, many times. He had just been starting out then, as had she, but he had gone on to become one of the most famous bandleaders of popular music history. She’d once read that he had sold over a hundred million records. For a time it seemed as if he was everywhere: he had hosted his own radio show, and later his own television show; he had starred in several dance band movies; he had arranged the music for many of Hollywood’s best-known movies, including some of Charlotte’s own; and his All-American Band had played every major hotel, theatre, and ballroom in the country, to say nothing of the White House and Buckingham Palace.
    Their lives had been like two arcs whose trajectories occupy the same plane in space and time but never intersect. Charlotte had often felt that fate must have been conspiring to keep them apart, so unlikely was it that their paths never crossed again.
    And if they had? Would she still have felt that spark? Or was she past the point of feeling sparks anymore? She turned to Paul, her