Where The Truth Lies - Plot

Plot

The film alternates between 1957, when Martin & Lewis-like comedy team Lanny Morris and Vince Collins are at the height of their success, and 1972, when journalist Karen O'Connor is determined to unravel the mystery of a young woman found dead in their hotel suite 15 years before.

In 1957, immediately after hosting a 39-hour-long polio telethon in a Miami television studio, Morris and Collins fly north to open the new showroom of a New Jersey hotel run by mobster Sally San Marco, who has intimidated them into appearing, in order to improve his own image. In their New Jersey hotel suite, shortly after their arrival, the nude body of Miami college student Maureen O'Flaherty is found in a bathtub. Maureen, an aspiring journalist working for the summer as a server at the comedy team's Miami hotel (which is also owned by San Marco), had been researching an article for her school newspaper on the comedy team, and had interviewed them in Miami just before she disappeared. Police investigation in no way connects either Morris or Collins to Maureen's death, which is officially attributed to a drug overdose. But almost immediately after her body is discovered, the two men's comedy partnership is dissolved, despite their enormous success and the closeness of their dependence on one another.

Meanwhile, many unanswered questions remain for any investigators of Maureen's death; the most confusing aspect is how Maureen's body made it from Miami to New Jersey at the same time the comedians were traveling.

15 years later, in 1972, Karen, who as a young polio survivor first met the duo at the same telethon portrayed in the movie's opening sequence, accepts a job to ghostwrite Vince Collins' autobiography — a deal from which Collins will earn $1 million, which he badly needs. The project is complicated by the fact that she keeps receiving anonymously-sent chapters from a book about the one-time duo that Lanny Morris himself has written; Karen had some prior knowledge of Morris' book project. Karen, who has idolized the comedians ever since first meeting them, encounters Morris, accompanied by his faithful valet Reuben, by chance in the first-class section of a flight, where she has to share a dinner table with them. Wishing to keep her identity secret, during the meal she introduces herself as "Bonnie Trout", the name of the best friend with whom she has traded apartments. Morris and Karen hit it off and have sex in his hotel. He disappears the next morning, apparently without leaving her a note.

Under her own name, Karen begins to work on the Collins autobiography. Complications arise when Collins invites her to an all-day working session at his Los Angeles home and she learns that Morris will be joining them as well. Near-panic ensues; she abruptly invents an excuse to leave, but meets Lanny in the driveway, and her masquerade is revealed — Lanny discovers she has lied to him about who she is, and Collins discovers that the woman he thought was helping him write his memoirs is having or has had an affair with his ex-partner. He agrees to continue with the book, but creates a situation in which he hopes to be able to blackmail Karen into staying away from the story of Maureen O'Flaherty, which is Karen's consuming interest. Thus, after plying Karen with wine and drugs, Collins manipulates her into having sex with a young aspiring singer named Alice. He photographs the two women in compromising positions and tells Karen that unless she tells the publisher that there is nothing odd or improper surrounding Maureen's death, he will make the pictures public.

Karen discovers that Maureen had secretly recorded her interactions with Morris and Collins. Gradually, it becomes clear what really happened that night 15 years before: the three had engaged in a ménage à trois, fueled by drugs and booze, and at some point Collins tried to have sex with Morris, who resisted violently. When Collins retreated to his room, Maureen tried to blackmail Morris to keep this information secret: in 1957, it would have finished Collins professionally and personally if it had come out that he was bisexual. Collins passed out in his room, Morris in his, and Maureen fell asleep on the couch. In the morning, she was dead.

Fifteen years later, Collins indeed faces the destruction of his life when Karen begins to uncover the story; Morris is horrified by the effects of what Karen is doing, and Karen discovers more about Morris' "fix-it man", Reuben. While both Morris and Collins were convinced the other murdered Maureen, they smuggled her body in a crate full of lobsters (a gift from San Marco) with Reuben's assistance, and the crate was shipped ahead of them to the New Jersey hotel. The tape recorder was on during the entire night, but the tape was missing all these years. Reuben confessed to Karen that he murdered Maureen to protect his employers' reputations, and produces the tape to confirm his guilt. He asks Karen if her publishing company will pay him, say, $1 million for the tape. Karen puts two and two together and realizes that Reuben was blackmailing Vince Collins, demanding $1 million from him to keep quiet his bisexuality, proven on the tape, and perhaps his having murdered Maureen (Collins was so drunk and drugged during that episode that he plainly doesn't remember what happened.) So Reuben was demanding a million bucks for a murder he himself committed.

At the end of the film, Vince is destroyed indeed, Lanny is furious at Karen for all that she has set in motion, and Karen has the answer to her mystery. Also, Karen tells Mrs. O'Flaherty that she will publish the truth only after an innocent bystander has died--referring (without saying so) to Maureen's mother, who would have been crushed to learn of her daughter's sexual activities and her attempted foray into blackmail.