The Marilyn Tapes (1995)

E. J. Gorman's novel, published by Forge in 1995, is set in the days just after Marilyn Monroe's death, when, as its jacket puts it, J. Edgar Hoover, Louella Parsons, the Mafia and the Kennedy brothers battle for tape recordings secretly made in her bedroom, recordings that could topple the Kennedy administration. Among those after the tapes is Melanie Baines, whom the cast list calls an unofficial agent for the FBI, with the private investigator Tully on her trail. (Open Library)

Watches

Longines watch: Parked in a rented blue Chevrolet under a dusty oak outside a grade school, in a white silk blouse and red pumps, Melanie glances at her Longines: the bell will ring in two minutes. She is watching for Sara Drury and her ten-year-old daughter Laura, because if she cannot find Sara's boss Bellamy she means to compromise Sara through the child; Tully's bronze Pontiac is on her tail. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: Melanie glanced at her Longines wristwatch. The school bell would ring in two minutes. Maybe she'd missed the woman she was looking for. (E. J. Gorman, The Marilyn Tapes, scan cataloged as Forge, 1995, p. 93; the cast list names her as an unofficial agent for the FBI; Internet Archive scan OCR)