Come Hell or Highball (11 page)

“I know what you mean,” I said. “Horace was the last one of the bunch I'd expect to be bumped off.” He'd always seemed to be, well, simply
there,
moseying in the margins, making big bucks, never complaining about his ballerina's rations. “Aside from his dalliance with Eloise Wright, he'd seemed to be a decent husband and father. It's a crying shame, especially since Digton's going to go barking up all the wrong trees.” I pushed down my fear with more bites of sausage. “You know what I think, Berta? I think we ought to figure out who killed Horace ourselves.”

Berta's eyes grew round. “That would be dangerous. And foolish.”

“You still want to get ahold of the reel, don't you?”

“That is a financial necessity.”

“Okay, well, if Horace's death is tangled up with the reel—and I'm not saying it is, but it
could
be—then looking for the film means looking for the murderer.”

“Mrs. Woodby, it is one thing to search for a missing item, and quite another to attempt to unmask a killer.”

“But if we're looking for the reel, will the murderer care about that distinction? Nope.”

“This is
not
what I intended when we decided to retrieve the reel for Miss Simpkin.”

“Well,
I
didn't exactly intend to be an accused murderess who's just maybe the
real
murderer's next victim, either.”

Berta and I stared at each other for a long, long moment. We were going to do it. We were going to try to solve a murder.

Which meant I was unquestionably nuts, just like the Prig said.

*   *   *

Once Berta and I were on the road again, I broke the silence. “To my way of thinking, it's obvious that we've got to locate Sadie Street and Eloise Wright. One of them has the reel in her bag.” I half hoped Berta would call the whole sleuthing thing off.

But no.

“The little trollop has the reel,” Berta said.

“Sadie?”

“Yes. I am not, of course, a lady who gambles. But if I were, my money would be on her.”

“So then you think she's the murderer, too?”

“Why not? Her eyes are as cold as ice.”

“But the way Hibbers told it, the reel could just as easily have been in Eloise Wright's bag.”

“Why would that one have a film reel? A society matron—”

I pressed harder on the gas pedal.

“—a rich husband in the ever-so-dull department store business. The other one, the trollop, is an actress. Film reels are her bread and butter. Perhaps she is on the film alongside Ruby Simpkin.”

A sudden thought hit me. I floored the gas pedal. We zoomed around a bend. Berta shrieked and clutched the dashboard. Cedric skittered on the rear seat.

“Come to think of it,” I said, “Sadie
did
mention something about embarrassing screen tests the night before last.”

“Aha! That is it. The budding starlet has something captured on the film that she would rather forget. Something she perhaps
killed
to forget.”

“It'll be a cinch,” I said. “We'll learn where Sadie Street lives, and pay her a little visit.”

*   *   *

When we arrived at the Longfellow Street love nest, I went straight to the telephone and asked the operator to connect me with the Hare's Hollow police department. When I was put through, first the secretary and then Inspector Digton scoffed at my request for Sadie Street's home address.

“Now, why would I give that to
you
?” Inspector Digton made a donkeylike guffaw.

I pulled the earpiece away. When I put it back to my ear, Digton was still hee-hawing.

“Thanks anyway,” I said, and rang off.

Next, I had the operator connect me to the Pantheon Pictures studio in Flushing, Queens. It was Sunday, so I crossed my fingers that I'd get an answer.

“Yeah?” a woman barked down the line.

“Would you please give me Sadie Street's address?”

“You gotta be kidding me, lady.”

“Wait! Don't hang up. I need to speak to her. It's urgent.”

“Do you wanna know how many calls I've gotten for her, and for Luciano and Zucker, from you pests today? Holy cow! I got better things to do.” She cut the connection.

You pests,
she'd said. She'd probably meant reporters.

Motion picture stars
and
murder. What a sensation. That gave me an idea.

I asked the operator to put me through to the offices of the
New York Evening Observer
.

“Hello, Duffy,” Ida Shanks said when I got her on the line. She was a hard worker to be there on a Sunday, I'd grant her that. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call? Don't tell me you plan to give me an exclusive on your full confession of murder.”

“Really, Miss Shanks,” I said. “We've known each other since we were five years old. You know very well I wouldn't murder anybody.”

“Dear me—doth the matron protest too much? And I do seem to recall a violent incident during which you pushed me from the seesaw and pulled my pigtails.”

“That wasn't me! I've
told
you. That was Pansy Fennig. Anyway, I thought you might know Sadie Street's address. That's right up your alley, isn't it?”

Ida cackled. “Now, why would I do
you
any favors?”

“Why not?”

“I haven't got her address.”

“Why do I think you're lying?”

“Think whatever you want, Duffy dear.” Ida hung up.

 

12

At four o'clock that afternoon, I dressed in my most matronly suit, a silk blouse, Ferragamos, and pearls, and made good on my promise to visit my mother. I took a taxi uptown and alighted at 993 Park Avenue. This was a ritzy brick apartment building with Italianate embellishments of creamy stone. It was fewer than ten years old, but it was already established as a Very Good Address.

I said hello to the uniformed doorman and took the elevator to the twelfth floor.

Father (with Mother's militant counsel) had wrung Wall Street dry like a rag mop, so they'd been able to purchase the apartment next door to their first one, knock out some walls, and make quite a swanky spread of it. I rang the doorbell—gold leaf and rococo—and the butler cracked the door. He was a rangy, dark-skinned fellow with gray hair, flawless livery, and a condescending manner that I was pretty sure Mother had drilled into him.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Woodby,” he said. “Your mother has been expecting you.”

“Hello, Chauncey.”

Chauncey wasn't his real name, of course. His real name was Fred, but Mother had decided that Chauncey sounded more butleresque.

He led me toward Mother's sitting room.

The entry foyer had black-and-white marble floors, ornate moldings, and a ponderous chandelier calculated to bring on a migraine. I was used to those things, as well as the authentic Louis XIV furniture that looked fake. New to me, however, were the huge wooden crates everywhere. It looked as though a circus train had disgorged its contents into the apartment.

Chauncey acted like nothing was amiss, even as he picked around loose packing straw.

We reached the sitting room.

“Lola!” my mother screamed. She hurtled herself forward in her chair, but apparently ran out of sufficient steam to actually stand up. She was what you'd call a statuesque woman, with gray-streaked, upswept dark hair and a face that was still pretty, despite the calculating glint in her eye.

“Hello, Mother. Looks like you've bought up all of Europe's movable bits—that
is
what's in those packing crates, I guess?”

“She's redecorating,” my sister, Lillian, said. “Again.”

“Hello, Lillian. Where's Father?”

“His club,” Mother said. “He said he needed to recuperate—from
what,
I cannot fathom.”

Mother and Lillian reclined in blue brocade chairs beside a tea table. The room was overheated and smelled of old lady–ish perfume. Orchids burst from Chinese pots; satin drapes burst in swags around tall windows.

“Lola, come here this instant,” Mother said. “Why, you look like something the cat dragged in, with those dark circles under your eyes.”

“Because of the murder, Mother,” Lillian said. “Don't forget that.”

I kissed Mother's powdery cheek.

“How
could
I forget?” Mother said. “Lola,
must
you insinuate yourself in such unbecoming scenarios? First Alfie has a heart attack, then that Arbuckle affair so soon afterwards? We have Lillian to think of.”

I sat, and started in on a lemon cream wafer from the tea table.

“That's right,” Lillian said to me. She appeared too feeble to raise her pre-Raphaelite curls from the chair back. She was pleasantly round, with that sort of marshmallow-white skin that burns in November and a face like a blue-eyed angel. Looks, of course, are deceiving. “I suppose you didn't think of
me
for a second before you waltzed off to get involved in boozy murders with low company.”

Low company
. Now, why did that phrase ring a bell?

“We have Lillian's matrimonial prospects to keep in mind,” Mother said.

Mother hallucinates, I have no doubt, about ordering bridal china for Lillian Carnegie or Lillian Rockefeller.

“It's not
my
fault that Lillian's debut was met with lackluster applause last winter,” I said.

“You're rotten!” Lillian said.

“Only checking to see if you still had a pulse,” I said.

“Girls!”

“By the way,” Lillian said to me, “what
are
you wearing?”

“Widow's weeds, darling.”

Mother said, “I'm not certain that that length of skirt is advisable with your ankles, Lola.”

“You ought to be in a party dress,” Lillian said. “You're finally rid of Alfie.”

“Lillian!” Mother said.

“Mother, you said the same thing yourself just a few days ago, on the ship. Said he was a flat tire and an embarrassment and it was good riddance all around.” Lillian gave me a nasty smile. “Too bad he spent all the money.”

My jaws froze mid-chew.

“That's right,” Lillian said. “Chisholm told us absolutely
everything
.”

I looked at Mother. “Alfie a flat tire and an embarrassment? That's yesterday's news, of course, but I didn't know you felt that way.”

“Aren't you sad?” Lillian asked.

“Why should I be? He was a hideous husband.”

“But now you're poor.”

“I'll manage.”

“How
can
you speak in such a laissez-faire fashion?” Mother said, pronouncing
faire
like
fay-yuh
. She had been taking private French lessons. I suspected her tutor was a native of the Bronx. “Lola, you are to assume an attitude of correct decorum this instant. I arrived home after an exhausting journey—the Italians do
not
know how to cook, oh the things we were forced to consume—to learn that everything has gone to the underworld in a handbasket.”

“The underworld?” I massaged my forehead.

“Do not goad me, child. Your husband is dead—”

“I told you as much in the telegram.”

“—Chisholm Woodby has taken up residence in Amberley, and now Olive Arbuckle's husband has been murdered.”

“You think that's all my fault? And back up a bit. Amberley? How did you know my—
the
—house's name has been changed?”

Mother and Lillian exchanged a sly glance.

“What?”
I asked. “What's going on?”

“It is time you knew, Lola,” Mother said. “For the duration of our Continental tour, Lillian has…”

The lemon wafer turned to sand on my tongue.

“Chisholm and I,” Lillian said in her Miss Priss voice, “have been corresponding. We have an understanding.”

“An
understanding
? You've—you're letting that prig, that absolute
prig,
romance you? Right under my nose, without even telling me? He's my brother-in-law!”

Lillian pruned her lips.

“It is not as though we intentionally hid anything from you, Lola,” Mother said. “Only days before we set sail in March, Mr. Woodby requested my permission to write to Lillian, and hear of her impressions of Europe.”

An awful thought struck me like a thunderbolt: If Lillian married Chisholm, Folie Maison, or Amberley, or whatever you called it—
my house
—would be hers. She'd probably redecorate the entire place in shades of puce.

“Oh, I wished to ask you, Lola,” Mother said, “have you had the pleasure of making Mr. Raymond Hathorne's acquaintance? He is in the soda pop business. Such a delightful, interesting man—”

“Interesting?” Lillian said. “Mother, he was as dull as arithmetic.”

“No, no, he was
très charmant
—”

Mental note: Ask Mother exactly how much she's paying that French tutor of hers.

“—when we met him at the captain's table during our voyage home. I was ever so impressed with his—”

“Bank account?” Lillian said.

“Lillian! No. With his character.”

Was it possible that Mother was already attempting to reel in another big fish for me?

“I have no interest in meeting new gentlemen,” I said. The briefest image of Ralph Oliver flickered in my mind's eye.

“Of
course
not. You are in mourning, and a proper duration of time must pass. But on the other hand—” Mother toyed with her bracelet. “—it never hurts to sow seeds, dear. And I got the distinct impression that Mr. Hathorne is not only on the wife hunt, but also not completely opposed to …
unconventional
sorts of ladies.”