“My God,” exclaimed Halstead, looking up from his papers. He began furiously dialing. “Is Billy Rapp on set today? See if he is available. He needs to see this.”
Harold Halstead made small talk, asking where Nora was living. Nodding, he began pulling out slips of paper from his center desk drawer and writing down names of landlords, tailors, restaurants. She was so engrossed in all of his suggestions that she didn’t see that the door had opened and a tall man with wavy brown hair and an aristocratic air had come to stand beside her. Halstead shot up from his chair, arm extended.
“Billy.” Harold Halstead smiled broadly and patted the man on the arm with his free hand. “Here is your Vivian for Train to Boston. Billy Rapp, meet Nora Wheeler. What do you think?”
Nora looked up and then rose, straightening her skirt. She knew this was her moment. She smiled slowly, not giving everything away, and extended her hand almost shyly. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Rapp.”
“Call me Billy.” The man smiled and the biggest green eyes Nora had ever seen stared back at her, amused. “And where might Harold have found you?” When he smiled, he had a dimple on one cheek—the left.
“New York.”
“Broadway?”
“Keep going.”
Billy Rapp laughed but didn’t shake Nora’s hand. Suddenly Nora was concerned that she’d not measured up. Maybe she had been average, just as Clint had always insisted.
“Screen test is amazing, too… not just the look,” added Halstead. “We worked on the look.” Halstead winked at Nora.
Billy studied Nora for a moment, not even being kind about looking her up and down like a coat he was buying. Nora was getting used to the fact that her body and her face were her product and people in Hollywood made no apologies about studying it. “You’re her.” Billy Rapp smiled and nodded. “Halstead, you’re a genius. You have no idea.”
Nora felt uneasy, like there was something unspoken between Halstead and Billy Rapp and that this wasn’t going to be as simple as a part in a movie.
18
Helen Lambert
Washington, DC, June 11, 2012
My pillow was a bloody mess when I woke up. The nosebleeds were getting worse and my head was pounding. I was upset that the alarm clock had stopped Nora in Halstead’s office.
The plane would take off for London at five P.M. from Dulles Airport. Just in case Luke was suspicious, Mickey had suggested we fly to London to cover our tracks and then take the Eurostar to Paris. Once in Paris, he’d found a train to Challans. I’d been researching the LaCompte family and found that Juliet’s brother, Marcel, had died in the Great War. Her father had remarried and had three more children with his second wife. Her sister, Delphine, seemed more elusive. After searching the records, I discovered a marriage certificate in the church between Juliet’s sister and Michel Busson. I stared at the screen for several minutes trying to register that I had left my younger sister to suffer my fate. She’d had three children with Michel Busson. I printed out a bunch of records on the grandchildren.
Before I began packing, I did a search on Nora Wheeler. There were 5,654 hits. I pulled up a vintage Hollywood website and clicked on the Nora Wheeler biography. I inhaled audibly as I saw a variation on my face as well as that of the girl who contemplated the step in Marchant’s painting, now hanging in the Hanover Collection. It wasn’t my face exactly, nor was it the girl from Marchant’s painting, but that was mostly because each was the product of its time. Style played tricks on the eyes, making two identical women look similar—like cousins. Nora Wheeler had a platinum-blond bob that fell at her chin. The light eyes peered out from heavy mascara. In the picture, she was dressed in a silk negligee on a sofa, her arm twisted in the same way as Girl on Step. The parallel between the two images was shocking.
A few other photos on websites featured stills from The Hidden Steps and A Million Kisses, which were widely considered to be Nora Wheeler’s best roles. In the final photo I found, she was attending a party at the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel with Billy Rapp. I leaned in close to the screen to look at Rapp. He was tan with golden-brown hair, but the man was definitely a version of the Auguste Marchant from my dreams as well as Roger from my present life. Nora was dressed in what appeared to be a silk dress that clung to her along with a white mink coat. I looked over at a photo of Roger and me from Kauai. The two women could certainly be related, and it struck me for the first time how much Roger seemed to resemble both Billy Rapp and a young Auguste
Marchant.
I printed out a few biographies and other research material on Nora Wheeler and stuffed them into my bag.
Mickey was waiting for me at Dulles. Our entire trip was less than seventy-two hours, so I wasn’t sure how much sleep we’d get once we landed.
I pulled out the biography of Nora Wheeler and began to read it.
Nora Wheeler
Born: June 22, 1910, in Akron, Ohio;
Disappeared and presumed dead July 24, 1935,
near Long Beach, California
Nora Wheeler, born Norma Evelyn Westerman, was an American actress who had minor roles in such films as Train to Boston (1932), The Hidden Steps (1933), Max and Me (1933), and A Million Kisses (1934). She was discovered in an Akron G. C. Murphy store by a New York producer and worked as a chorus girl for two years before landing a contract for Monumental Films in Hollywood, eventually landing small parts in films. While she received good reviews for her work in A Million Kisses and The Hidden Steps, produced by her husband William “Billy” Rapp, she never became a leading actress. In 1935, her husband was found dead in their home from a gunshot wound to the head. The death was ruled a suicide, but there were suspicions that Rapp may have been murdered. The scandal proved too much for Wheeler’s Hollywood career and she was never offered another role. While the case of Billy Rapp was never solved, Steve Mason, in his book Hollywood Murders of the 30s, concludes that Rapp did not commit suicide but was murdered by his male lover, actor Ford Tremaine, who according to several accounts confessed to the murder on his deathbed. Rapp’s biographer, Beth Powell, however, suspects that the director may have been killed by a former associate of his wife’s. Further adding to the mystery, Wheeler disappeared off the coast of Long Beach when a boat she was traveling on capsized. Wheeler’s body was never recovered and she was presumed dead, although unconfirmed sightings of her continued until 1944. On her deathbed, famed stage actress Lillibet Denton claimed to have spoken to the actress in a Paris bookstore but could recall no real details of the encounter, so the story was largely dismissed.
We were off the Labrador coast at a cruising altitude of thirty-six thousand feet when a wave of sleep hit me.
19
Nora Wheeler
Los Angeles, 1933
It was a Mediterranean breeze coming in from the Santa Monica Beach Club that made Nora wish she’d brought a sweater. She still couldn’t get used to the intensity of the Southern California sun throwing off harsh shadows like they captured in the silent films. And yet in an instant there could be a breeze off the ocean that could freeze her to the bone.
Shielding her eyes, she got a good look at Billy.