You Might As Well Die (26 page)

And was it so smart to turn down a good restaurant meal? She had only about seventy-five cents in her purse, which had to cover lunch today and whatever she’d have for dinner tonight.

She sighed, sensing her options (or lack of them) close in around her. She had been feeling very bad about the sudden and mysterious death of MacGuffin, as though there might have been something she could have done to prevent it. And she was still sore about Midge MacGuffin’s bestselling, yet blank, book. Now, with her own life looking so dreary, she was beginning to feel even worse. Maybe, by default, she
was
one of those women, after all.

With heavy steps, she entered the hotel’s dining room.

“Mrs. Parker!” Alexander Woollcott trilled. “Your magical guest has been waiting anxiously for you.”

Sitting next to Woollcott, looking perfectly at home at the Round Table, was Harry Houdini.

 

Houdini stood up as Dorothy came over to the Round Table. He was the only one who stood.

“Don’t stand on ceremony,” she said. “Certainly none of the other boys here do.”

“Tosh!”
Woollcott said. “Mrs. Parker
is
one of the boys here.”

Nevertheless, she allowed Houdini to pull out her chair and she sat down. Despite his age, Houdini looked as fresh as his starched white monogrammed shirt with the gold
HH
. The late-night scramble through the alleys and the confrontation with MacGuffin hadn’t seemed to affect him at all.

“It’s a pleasant surprise to see you today,” she said.

“I heard the news about the discovery of Ernie MacGuffin’s dead body,” Houdini said. “I hastened to locate you immediately. I imagined that I might find you here. And indeed I have.”

From Houdini’s other side, Woollcott leaned across, scolding her. “You’ve kept him waiting for nearly fifteen minutes, Mrs. Parker. Fortunately for you, Mr. Houdini has remarkable powers of patience, in addition to his amazing powers of prestidigitation.”

Woollcott grinned desperately at Houdini, looking like a lapdog hoping for a crumb to fall from the table.

Dorothy smiled. “Yes, he’s got tremendous powers for ‘some rube,’ doesn’t he, Aleck?”

Woollcott reddened at his own words from the other night, but he recovered quickly. “I already made my apologies to Mr. Houdini about that. His marvelous disguise could fool his own mother, I’m sure.”

Houdini blanched at this heedless mention of his beloved mother. He turned away from Woollcott (who realized he’d made some sort of blunder) toward Dorothy. Houdini quickly redirected the conversation back toward Ernie MacGuffin. “My mind finds it unthinkable that the man found dead in the street this morning is one and the same with the hale and hearty fellow we interrogated Halloween night,” Houdini said.

Dorothy would never have described MacGuffin—who was as spindly as a scarecrow—as hale and hearty. But she knew what Houdini meant.

“Unthinkable is right,” she said. “But we just came from the police. It’s MacGuffin, for sure. He’s dead for real this time.”

Woollcott babbled, “We were all certainly amazed when Mr. Houdini arrived. And then we were even more amazed when he told us the full, exciting story of how he single-handedly unmasked that unscrupulous phony psychic and that malefactor MacGuffin—”

“Put a sock in it, Aleck,” Robert Sherwood said, and faced Dorothy. “What did the police say?”

She exchanged a quick glance with Benchley. Captain Church and Detective O’Rannigan had asked them to keep their ears open and their mouths closed about MacGuffin’s death.

But everyone had questions.

Sherwood asked, “Did they tell you how he died?”

“Did they explain why he was found in Water Street, not in the river?” Houdini asked.

“Did anybody see anything?” George Kaufman asked.

“Was he murdered?” Woollcott asked.

Everyone went quiet.

Leave it to Woollcott to jump to the most sensational of explanations,
Dorothy thought. Then again, it was the one she suspected as well.

She opened her mouth to speak, but Neysa McMein entered the dining room and rushed to the Round Table. Though she was an artist, Neysa rarely exhibited an ‘artistic temperament.’ She was usually as calm as the Dead Sea. But not today.

“I just happened to go by Cathcart’s shop on my way here,” she said breathlessly. “He told me all about the decline in the value of MacGuffin’s paintings—and his encounter with Mickey Finn.”

Woollcott was perplexed. “The decline in value? Why would MacGuffin’s paintings lose value? He was dead last week. He’s still dead today. What’s changed?”

Neysa found an empty chair next to Kaufman and plopped down. “MacGuffin’s work has little intrinsic value. As art, it’s nearly worthless. And as curiosity pieces or investments, their cachet is now gone—”

“Because no one thinks MacGuffin jumped from the bridge after all,” Dorothy said.

Neysa nodded. “As a suicide, he was a tortured artist. But as a body in the gutter, he was just a bum.”

Dorothy felt another pang of guilt at Neysa’s words.

“Tut-tut,” Woollcott said, waving his hand as though shooing a fly. “As I promised, my newspaper column this morning glorified the very painting in Benchley’s possession. There’s no way in all creation that its value can possibly decrease after the lauds I loaded on it.”

Neysa looked at him sadly. “Actually, that article is not helping.”

“Not helping?” Woollcott reddened.

“Not at all,” Neysa said. “If anything, it’s making things worse.”

“What do you mean?” Woollcott huffed. “Explain yourself.”

“Cathcart told me that art experts and critics who discuss these things wonder if your article was intended to inflate the price of the painting.”

“Well, indeed it was,” Woollcott said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong with that is that you’ve fanned the flames of destruction. You’ve accelerated the speed of its decline.”

“How is that possible?” he said. “I wrote nothing but wonderful things about it.”

“They think it’s puffery,” Houdini said. “I know all about that.”

Woollcott blanched at Houdini’s assessment of his work.

Neysa nodded. “They can see right through it. It put them on the scent, and now they’re tearing into it. Overpraised. Overpriced and overvalued.”

“Over and done with,” Dorothy said morosely.

“Over the love of Pete!” Benchley said drolly, but Dorothy could hear the concern behind his words. “How much are they saying it’s worth?”

“It’s gone from five thousand when you bought it at auction down to twelve hundred on the street,” Neysa said.

“‘On the street’?” Woollcott sneered.

“It’s only a figure of speech,” Neysa said.

“Just a minute,” Dorothy said. “Cathcart told us that he thought it was worth nineteen hundred, not twelve hundred. And Finn expected it to increase tenfold. He expects Mr. Benchley to repay him fifty thousand.”

Houdini shook his head. “Fifty thousand for one painting by a nearly unknown contemporary artist? I’ve bought paintings by European masters for as much. But I wouldn’t pay a fraction of that for one of MacGuffin’s.”

“You and the rest of the world,” Benchley said, sinking in his chair.

“But if he was murdered—?” Houdini began.

“The police are saying it was accidental,” Dorothy said, phrasing her words carefully.

“But if it
was
murder, the value of his work might indeed skyrocket again after all,” Woollcott said, looking to Houdini for approval. “It certainly would be sensational.”

Houdini nodded. Woollcott smiled.

“It’s possible,” Neysa agreed. “But it doesn’t sound like much of a murder—if that’s even what it was.”

Dorothy and Benchley exchanged glances again. If MacGuffin’s paintings skyrocketed in value, that would certainly get them out of a jam.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s say that MacGuffin was murdered, just for argument’s sake. If so, who killed him?”

Woollcott threw up his hands. “Who knows? Who cares?”

“No one even knew he was alive,” Sherwood said.

“That’s not exactly true,” Benchley said, his smile slowly returning. “A few people did.”

“Who?” Neysa asked.

“Houdini and myself,” Dorothy said.

“I think we can rule out you two,” Sherwood said.

“MacGuffin’s wife knew, of course,” Dorothy said.

“Anyone else?” Sherwood asked.

“His mistress, Viola,” she said.

“Is that it?”

“His lawyer, Snath,” she said.

Kaufman frowned. “A man’s wife, his mistress and his lawyer. Sounds like a divorce case, not a murder.”

Houdini said, “But if they were the only people who knew he was alive, it must have been one of them.”

“Great,” Dorothy said sourly. “So now what do we do?”

As she spoke, Luigi the waiter appeared beside the Round Table.

Woollcott sniffed. “We do what we always do at times like these,” he said, unfolding his napkin. “We order lunch.”

L
ate that afternoon, Dorothy was alone in her room. She couldn’t stop thinking about Ernie MacGuffin. He was dead, unquestionably dead. It was no prank this time. Dr. Norris, with whom she was about to go on a date this evening, had been examining MacGuffin’s body that very morning.

It gave her chills.

She put on her stockings and picked out a dress and a scarf. She powdered her face and sprayed on perfume—lots of perfume. (She feared Dr. Norris might smell of death, and she wanted to cover the smell.)

She tried to think about having a date, even if it was with Dr. Norris. . . .

But she couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt. Ernie had begged for her help, and she turned her back on him.
I just want to pretend you’re dead, too,
she had said. Now she didn’t have to pretend.

But then again, she told herself, it was nobody’s fault but his own. She had told him,
You made your bed, you lie in it
. Well, Ernie had dug his own grave, and now he was lying in that.

So she was glad for the distraction when she heard the knock on the door. She looked over at Woodrow Wilson, snoozing on the couch.

“You’re some watchdog, Woody,” she said.

The dog raised his head at his name, then plopped it down again.

Dorothy opened the door. Lucy Goosey stood in the hallway.

“Miss Goosey. What are you doing here?” Dorothy asked.

“Mickey sent me to give you a reminder. He wants his money.”

“Oh, that paltry fifty grand. It nearly slipped my mind,” Dorothy said with a casual wave of her hand. “Tell him I’ll look through my sofa cushions and coat pockets, and I’ll have that money for him in no time.”

Lucy nodded but didn’t answer. She gazed at Dorothy with a sort of disdainful curiosity, as though looking at a poisonous snake in a zoo’s reptile house.

“Was there something else?” Dorothy asked.

Lucy seemed to be debating something in her mind. “I had a very nice evening with Mr. Benchley the other night at the auction. He’s a sweetheart,” she said.

Dorothy took a step forward. She couldn’t hold her tongue. “Keep away from my Benchley.”

Lucy didn’t back away. “He’s not yours.”

“He’s not yours either. Why are you bothering with him?”

“I’m not bothering with him.”

“Like hell you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Lucy said, and glanced at the floor. “Not anymore anyway. I saw the way you look at him. I wanted to feel like that, that’s all. I wanted what you have.”

Dorothy was taken aback. “What
I
have? I don’t have anything with Benchley.”

But Dorothy knew what she had with Benchley. He made her feel like life was a party and she was the center of the party. But she didn’t want to admit this to anyone, certainly not to some gangster’s moll. Instead she said, “You already have a man.”

Lucy folded her arms. “Mickey is his own man, not mine.”

“Not yours? He dotes on you like a rich grandfather. Any girl should be so lucky.”

“I know, I know. I have him on my arm, but I don’t exactly have him here.” She tapped a finger over her heart. “Not like you do with Benchley.”

This was getting too personal, Dorothy thought. “Mr. Benchley is a married man. I would never do anything to disrupt that. I wouldn’t steal another woman’s husband.”

“Married doesn’t matter,” Lucy said. “You think of him as yours.”

So what if I do?
Dorothy thought. But she said, “What’s it to you?”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t squander it. I wouldn’t risk losing it. I’d make it grow.”

Dorothy bit her lip. “I’m not sure I can do that. I’m not sure if I
want
to do that.”

Lucy looked at her squarely. “Sure you do.”

Again, so what if I do?
But she said, “What of it?” Now Lucy took a step forward. “When your chance comes, when you’re alone together some sunny day, holding hands under a picture-postcard sky—or even on a smelly empty subway car or the dark backseat of some taxi—show him how you feel. Kiss him, damn it. Kiss him. Show him you’re serious.”

“Serious is the last word to describe how I feel about Mr. Benchley. Or how he feels about me,” Dorothy said. “I could never do that. It would simply ruin our friendship.”

“He’s devoted to you, you know. Call it friendship or something else, he’s devoted to you.”

Dorothy sighed. “And I don’t want to spoil that.”

“It’ll spoil your life if you don’t do something about it. You can’t be that close to a man for so long without something happening. Eventually it’ll poison your relationship. One day, you have to show him how you feel.”

“Ridiculous,” Dorothy said.
But in truth, maybe it wasn’t so ridiculous after all.

“Do you want to live your whole life like someone in an audience, watching life go by without you playing a part in it? Do you want to end up a shriveled, lonely old lady, never having taken your chance?”