Cultists Always Ring Twice

By Teel James Glenn

Moxie Donovan, freelance reporter, is a big-hearted slob, right? An old girlfriend- turned-movie star comes to him for help with a vile blackmailer. He can’t resist offering to help her — especially since he might discover a story suitable for publication.

His wife Maxi, on the other hand, isn’t so altruistic. Moxie is hers, damnit, hers! No pigeon-toed actress is going to put the move on him — except for herself, of course. Before finding the blackmailer, they run up against Gestapo goons and crazed chorus girls. Turns out even Hollywood Zombies need agents!

MOXIE DONOVAN is a tough Irish reporter married to red-haired, Jewish movie star MAXI KELLER. Relocated to Universal Studios in Hollywood in 1938, the duo investigate mysteries spinning into the realm of weird tales, often with the Nazi menace and occult matters looming behind the famous Hollywoodland sign.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: Feb 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005921217

Teel James Glenn

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Teel--or T.J. as most know him, has a long career as a performer, teacher, stunt expert that has informed his writing.

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Copyright © 2022 Teel James Glenn. All rights reserved.

Maxie and Moxie TM & © 2022 author. All rights reserved.

Bold Venture Press, February 2022

This is a work of fiction. The characters, places and events depicted in this story are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, and places or events is coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author or the publisher. This eBook is licensed for your enjoyment only. If you are reading this and didn’t purchase a copy, please purchase your own. Thanks for respecting this author’s hard work.

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Cultists Always Ring Twice

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

About the author

More from Bold Venture Press

To Dave O’Brien —

An unsung hero of the 1940s who always brought it first class even on PRC Budgets

Acknowledgements:

Once more, my E.T. makes me better and better with every correction. Thanks.

Cultists Always Ring Twice

Dateline: Hollywood 1938

Chapter 1

The Flashback Floozy

My name is Michael Aloysius Donovan, aka Moxie and I’m an inkslinger by trade. That is a reporter who has devolved down the evolutionary scale to work as a press agent for Universal Studios where my wife was a contract star.

I was sitting in my office on the lot when my part in this story began like most of my stories have of late — with a body. Only this body was five feet two of female pulchritude poured into a red sheath dress and was still breathing. And talking.

I need your help sleuthing, Moxie. The dame in the sheath had an urgency to her southern drawl and it was a drawl I knew all too well.

She was like a shimmering ghost from my past. On the silver screen she was know to the wide world as Gloria Laredo, sultry Latin star, but when we had dated she had been plain old Maria Caligento. Not that she was plain or old. She had sultry eyes the color of ebony and ‘kiss-me’ lips that Garbo could be jealous of.

I remembered those lips and shivered at that memory.

Why my help, Miss Laredo? I asked trying to maintain a professional demeanor.

Maria aka Gloria and I had been an item for almost a year when I was on the crime beat in Kansas City and she had been doing dinner theatre.

It wasn’t as serious for her as it had been for me, but then, ink was in my blood and reporting was my first love. I wasn’t so heart broken when she went west to make her fortune in the movies that two bottles of Scotch couldn’t sooth my shattered ego. As it was, I went east and found fame, fortune and spouse in the Big Apple’s dirty streets.

Why not go to Turner or Marlow or one of the two dozen actual private dicks here in Lala land? I’m just a news hack and not even for the same studio you’re under contract to. Sleuthing without a headline is out of my line. I’m not a detective. We were in my little office in one of the outer buildings on the Universal Pictures lot that I had inherited from the previous studio publicity man.

Because I don’t want any of them, especially a wolf like Turner, seeing this, Moxie. She pulled a glossy photo out of her handbag and plunked it down on my desk.

I leaned in to take a gander and my peepers almost jumped out of my head.

The black and white photo had obviously been taken from a frame of movie film, blown up though not so grainy the action was not explicit. It showed two people doing the horizontal mambo in clear enough detail to show that one of them was Maria. It was the kind of image you normally only saw at a smoker — graphic in the extreme.

I sat back, blew air out through my clenched teeth and did my best to tear my peepers from the photo to look up into her pleading eyes. I had no doubt it was not a faked photo because I recognized a birthmark on her left breast and … uh … various other features I remembered from our romps in Kansas City.

Blackmail? I asked, the dirty word hard to force out of my lips.

Yes. She said in a whisper. Six weeks now.

You’ve paid out money?

Ten thousand dollars, she said with a lack of hope in her tone. All I have; he promised to give me the negative of the film but he never has. And every two weeks there has been another note asking for more money.

I shook my head in disgust. Blackmail was a filthy business and the extortionist almost never gave up their ‘trump card’ no matter how much the victim paid. Worse bloodsuckers than vampires or even lawyers.

How did they communicate with you?

Notes like this, she handed me a little piece of paper with the words, Another five thousand dollars or else. It was signed with a capital A that was written in red.

Yup, a scarlet letter A; real classy.

This is the last one, I, uh, destroyed the others, I couldn’t bear to have them around.

And the delivery instructions?

Each time different. She fought back sobs — she was right on the edge of losing it. A park bench, under Santa Monica Pier. A second note followed each demand. They just sort of appeared under my door.

I digested that. It sounded pretty well thought out.

How much footage could he have? I asked in as clinical a fashion as a wolf like me could manage. Is there more of this?

Her face colored and she snatched the photo back to put in her bag. She seemed hurt that I wasn’t knocked out of my chair by the pornographic image of her but frankly they didn’t get her good side. Plus you learn to develop a thick skin in the news business. I did kind of wish she’d left the photo out, though it might have just been my imagination, but my wedding ring seemed to heat up at that moment.

More than enough, she said. The man in the photo was my first boyfriend when I came out here to California. We were together for almost a year and … and then I caught him cheating and broke up with him.

So there could be more than one film? I felt like a heel asking but if I was gonna help her — and yes, old softy Donovan had already decided to do what I could to help — so I had to have all the info I could get.

No! she spat quickly, blanching at the thought. The — the other photos I was sent were all from this same night. Our last night together. It is the only time we — we were intimate at his studio.

A photographer?

A producer of low budget films. She said. It seemed hard for her to force the words out and she looked away from me to stare out the window to the back lot. He told me he cared for me —

I remember saying the same thing. It slipped out before I could stop myself. I didn’t mean to be bitter, but some old wounds were deeper even than Scotch.

… But when I caught him cheating I knew he was just using me so I left him. She did her best to ignore my childish jab. Good for her; my wife is right, sometimes I’m a jerk.

And how long ago was that?

Three years, she said. I went on to a contract at Paramount. Now something big is about to happen, it’s pretty hush-hush, but now I’m about to sign a principal contract with M.G.M. There will be a lot more money when I sign.

Good for you, I said trying to mitigate my cad remark. I knew you were on the way up.

She took my offer of truce and continued her story. I also have recently become engaged.

Don’t tell me it’s to Randy Scott? I was really surprised if it were true — even though I’d only been in tinsel town for six months, as a press flack for the studio I had to keep up on the gossip; I knew she had been seen in a number of nightspots with the tall handsome star, but there had been no hint they would go further.

She laughed. It was the first time I’d seen the bubbly expression on her I remembered. It still looked good on her.

No, she said. Randy is sweet — a real gentleman, but he — uh — well, actually he married Marion Somerville last year but the studio kept it quiet. He’s fine with keeping his real private life out of tabloids.

So it was the usual studio snow job, huh?

Yes a studio publicity set up, she said, My fiancé is Karl Schmidt.

Of the aircraft Schmidts?

Yes, she said. We’ve been dating for a year quietly and that’s fine with us too.

I opened my bottom draw and pulled out some single malt and two glasses. When I offered her one she looked like she was going to say no but reconsidered. I poured two fingers for each of us and clinked glasses with her in a silent toast to old and new times.

She shot hers back like a lost soul in the desert taking her first drink of water. I nursed mine awhile letting the caressing warmth crawl down my throat in sips.

I’m not being a wisenheimer on this, Maria, I said. But what do you want from me, exactly? How can I really help you? Do you have an idea who the guy is who’s doing this?

I don’t know either thing for sure, she insisted. The man in the picture is Stan Young.

He headed that little outfit, Resilient Pictures, didn’t he?

Yes, she said, Mostly cheap westerns; that … that photo was taken in an office on his lot that was often used as a set.

So hire a private eye who is more muscle than brains and have him leaned on. When in doubt I fall back on my New Jersey roots to solve problems, though I do like to delegate that sort of thing.

I would have done that if it was that easy, Moxie, but Stan died last year in a car crash.

Oh, I see, I said though I didn’t really, not clearly. So is it possible that someone got his secret stash and decided to use it with your star in ascendancy. I swirled the booze in the glass and studied the patterns in it. It was not a particularly good crystal ball ’cause I couldn’t see any solution to her problem.

I don’t know. She held out her glass and I refilled it. All I know is that if this gets out my career is over; the morals clause in the studio contract you know, but more important Karl will leave me. She threw the drink back and coughed. I — I look like a cheap whore!

The cough turned into a sob and the sob opened the floodgates. In a moment she was letting a full waterworks show loose.

I remembered her pretty well from Kansas City, and I had never seen her cry except on the stage, so it was a shock to see it in the real world.

I shot the rest of my drink back, popped out of my chair and came around the desk to grab her so she could cry it out on my shoulder.

And that is how my wife found us when she burst through the door.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Chapter 2

When a Body Meets a Body…

My wife, the former Maxine Gladys Kellerman of the Bronx (Maxine Keller was her stage name) was a dancer-actress who had just signed a seven-picture deal with Universal and had been off finishing up a horror picture with George Zucco on loan to RKO.

I hadn’t expected her back that day.

She froze in the door, the smile of surprise freezing on her lips and her green eyes suddenly blazing in a way that made me feel abruptly like the cat that had been caught with the canary half stuffed in his mouth. And spitting out feathers would do me no good.

Maria was oblivious and continued to bawl her eyes out. Her shoulders were doing little jumps against my chest. I was torn between dropping my arms and jumping away from her as if she were on fire and standing my ground to secure in my innocence.

I compromised and loosened my grip to pat her on the back.

Hi, Maxi, I said with every bit of an unstained escutcheon and all the courage I could muster. I didn’t expect you back so soon.

It’s pretty clear you didn’t. They killed my character off so I’m done with the picture a day early. Her tone and attitude dropped the temperature in the room ten degrees but I was keenly aware of her use of the word ‘killed.’ She closed the door behind her and walked across the room, or rather slinked across the room to stand directly beside us. She glared at the two glasses and bottle of booze and then up at me.

Do I get introduced?

Maria noticed Maxi then and pulled her face out of my chest. Her red-rimmed eyes were a mess, the mascara having coursed down her cheeks like war paint.

Mrs. Maxi Donovan, I said formally, may I introduce Maria … uh … Miss Gloria Laredo.

Maria/Gloria tried to pull herself together and with a Herculean effort just managed to stop the heaving sobs. Uh … hello, she whispered. I know this must look bad but —

Oh not at all, Maxi said with no warming of her sub-zero shoulder. I find women melting on my husband all the time. She walked past us to the desk and, choosing the glass that didn’t have lipstick on it, poured herself more than two fingers and shot it back in one go.

I … uh should be going. Gloria pulled herself across the room and removed tissues from her purse to try and reassemble herself.

There’s a washroom over there, I pointed. Take your time; we should talk again before you leave.

She hurried from the room to the water closet down the hall and I turned to face the quiet fury of my better half.

I can explain, Maxi, I said. But after she leaves; please trust me on this.

She fixed me with a look that could have melted a glacier and refrozen it but just nodded. She poured a second drink and just held it and I wasn’t sure if it was to drink or throw.

We said nothing else until Maria reentered, looking sultry once more.

I will look into the matter we discussed, Gloria, I said to her. But please write down a few things for me before you go. I handed her a piece of paper where I had written down questions for her. Names I needed and contact information that would let me begin an investigation.

She filled it out and pointedly ignored Maxi’s glare at her.

I can pay you if need …

I can’t take any of your money, Maria, I said. I have a very successful wife and I even make a salary here at Universal. Just don’t worry yourself, Well get to the bottom this.

Gloria handed the paper back to me and walked to the door. She turned to look directly into Maxi’s eyes and spoke quietly.

Your husband is the last of the good guys, Mrs. Donovan. She gave a thousand-watt smile. You’re a lucky woman.

When the door closed behind her, my redhead exploded at me. What the hell are you —

I capped the exploding well before the gusher could drown me. I grabbed her and planted the best kiss on her perfect lips I could muster.

She struggled against me trying to get her arms free to belt me but gradually the ardor of my kiss quieted her down. I note that she never spilled a drop of the single malt.

When I deemed it safe enough I let her go and stepped away but I still put my hands up in case she swung.

Listen, hon, I said. Just let me talk; if you don’t like what I have to say you get a free shot.

She regarded me with her head cocked to the side and squinted at me. Talk or die.

I decided the direct approach was the best and told her everything Maria/Gloria had told me.

She listened with her arms crossed and never let a muscle twitch on her gorgeous kisser. I didn’t stint on the gory details but kept my Galahad flag up as high as I could raise it.

"So this old girlfriend of