Vera Miles

            On Tuesday morning I worked out the chords for the sixth and seventh verses of “C’est le Bebop” by Boris Vian.

            I wasn’t quite able to memorize the fourth verse of “Mon Légionnaire” by Raymond Asso but I should be able to nail it down tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar for the last of four sessions. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I shaved but ran out of gel and had to finish with shampoo-conditioner. If beards were invisible I wouldn’t shave as much but I also wouldn’t shave as well. 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos before lunch.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco to buy grapes but they were all too soft. So I walked over to Metro but only found two bags that were relatively firm. I also bought shaving gel. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:53. 

            I finished re-reading “The Self Mourning: Reflections on Pearl” by David Aers. That essay makes me cringe. I doubt if he has children. I copied all the relevant quotes. Tomorrow I’ll write three stream of consciousness pages in cursive on that essay and on Pearl. Then I’ll transcribe them and start turning it into a critical summary. 

            I had two potatoes with gravy while watching season 2, episode 4 of Burke’s Law. 

            Wealthy model agent Charles Lee Horne is throwing a garden party when he calls Burke’s office and asks for him. Les tells him Sunday is Burke’s day off but Horne is desperate. Suddenly we see a rifle in the bushes beyond the party. It fires and Horne is dead. Burke is called. Horne had one living relative, which is his brother Al Devlin. Devlin is a rock and roll DJ who hates rock and roll. He was very distant from his brother. He says to try Claudia Sutton who ran the business for him. Burke goes to see her and she flirts with him immediately. She says she was Horne’s top model when he started. She had some ideas and he let her run with them. Their success led to her running the business. Burke asks about women in Horne’s life and she mentions their model Felice Knight. She says he showed no interest in any of his models for years until she came along. Burke meets Felice at a restaurant. She insists there was no love affair with Horne. She says she was modelling when Horne was killed. Then Tim walks in and Burke introduces them. She acts like she knows Tim and is upset when he doesn’t. She suddenly reacts as if Tim and Burke are playing a game with her and she says she knows just what to do before leaving. Tim says there was something vaguely familiar about her. The next day Captain Metcalfe from Internal Affairs comes to see Tim and brings Felice. Metcalfe shows Tim a report he filed a year before and asks him to tell the story. Two street people had been fighting in an alley and one died. The other got away. Tim interviewed people at the scene and one woman came forward. Now he remembers that it was Felice. He took her downtown to look at the mug shots and she didn’t see the killer. She now says that she recognized Charles Lee Horne among the mug shots. She’d been trying to get hired by him for a year. Tim wouldn’t tell her about Horne’s rap sheet and so she started dating him until he gave her the info she needed to blackmail Horne. Tim says she’s lying. Metcalfe says they are legally bound to investigate and so for now Tim is under suspension and not allowed to leave his apartment. Burke has a skating date with Claudia who tells him that Felice is separated from her husband Gil Lynch. Les uncovers that Devlin inherits Horne’s fortune and Claudia will get control of the business. Based on Horne’s bank statements he was also being blackmailed. Burke guesses that Horne had a record. Burke goes to see Lynch. He says Felice left him because he wasn’t ambitious like she was. Tim is supposed to stay home but he goes to talk with Felice. There is no answer but her door his open. Inside he finds her apartment has been ransacked. He catches someone sneaking out and tackles him. The guy hits Tim over the head with a vase and knocks him out. Felice tells the police that Tim searched her place. The investigation deepens and Tim is again confined to his place. The lab finds the prints of private investigator and former cop Earl Fuller in Felice’s place. Burke goes to see Fuller and he immediately starts fighting. Burke subdues him and twists his arm. He says Felice hired him to find out Horne’s record a year ago. He knew he couldn’t do it but pretended he could and got a retainer. She fired him after a couple of months but she still had the receipt and so when Horne was killed he knew he could be incriminated so he went to her place to look for the receipt. Burke learns that Felice has been beaten to death and Tim is not at home. The clerk at Felice’s hotel got a call from a Detective Tilson who said he was coming over. They find Tim and he says he got a phone call from someone saying they knew who was setting him up and to meet him at a certain corner. It turned out to be an empty lot. Burke has to find out who gave Felice the information about Horne’s record and thinks it could be Devlin. He goes to see him and he admits he had an affair with Felice and she got the information from him. He says she was still seeing her ex-husband Gil. Burke goes to see Gil and wants to question him downtown. Gil goes for the rifle he used to kill Horne but Burke stops him. They have a fairly long fight before Burke finally knocks him out. 

            Claudia was played by Vera Miles, who was Miss Kansas of 1948. That led to Hollywood. Her first credited appearance was in Rose Bowl Story. John Ford cast her in The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. At the same time Alfred Hitchcock claimed her as his new Grace Kelly and put her under personal contract. He cast her in The Wrong Man and then in Psycho. She co-starred in Beau James, The FBI Story, Back Street, Sergeant Ryker, A Touch of Larceny, Follow Me Boys, Molly and Lawless John, Wichita, The Initiation, Separate Lives, and Psycho II.