The It Girl and Me

PrologueLOS ANGELES HALL OF JUSTICE, WOMEN’S CELL BLOCK, January 3, 1931 Rumor has it that when confronted with a patrol of bluecoats ready to bivouac outside his cabin near Fredonia, Kentucky, my grandpappy, Will Henry DeBoe, gave their captain such an earful that they turned tail and spent the night elsewhere. Yes, they had guns, but he had a tongue sharper than Robert E. Lee’s saber. Kentucky was a border state, but there was no doubt where Grandpap’s sympathies lay. When that rebel general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, invaded a few years later, Grandpappy saluted and tacked his Stars and Bars to the cabin wall. His was one of the few places that wasn’t burned to the ground. It seems far-fetched, I know, but Paw swears up and down it’s true (even though he wasn’t born until twelve years after the war ended). My point being, we DeBoes don’t scare easily. Then or now. Maw comes to visit me, but those vulture newspapermen take her picture. They’ve been camped outside for days waiting to snap photos of anyone related to the trial. The neighbors already saw the police arrest me. Maw doesn’t need this. Not after what happened with Paw. She’s getting older, and at my age I should be helping her instead of being such a burden. “Daisy, honey,” she said last time she came to visit, “cain’t you make some kind of plea bargain? So’s they can git you out of here?” She sniffed into her handkerchief and tucked it back into her pocketbook. “Afraid not, Maw,” I said. I took her hand across the visiting room table. “I did what was right. I’m not a thief. The judge is going to realize that, and so is the jury.” I’d been sitting in clover with this job—secretary to the world’s most famous movie star— making decent coin, traveling the country, and trying to keep Clara Bow in line until a minor squabble turned into a major fight, and then an arrest. Mine. Now here I sit, in the LA County Jail. Money, publicity, and the power of Paramount Pictures was going to trump a poor secretary with the best of intentions. But this Kentucky girl still had an ace up her sleeve.