Dig Deep My Grave

by Cheryl Honigford

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “I think you two need some time alone. Just a few minutes, mind.” Freddy glanced over his shoulder at the policeman who had started moving toward them. “And watch—”

  “What I say. Yes.”

  • • •

  Charlie stood when she entered the room. He had discarded his white linen jacket with the smear of Hap’s blood across it, Vivian was relieved to see. He locked eyes with her, and one corner of his mouth quirked up as he brushed a lock of errant dark-blond hair out of his eyes.

  “Oh, Charlie.” She rushed forward, arms outstretched, but the policeman stepped deftly between them.

  “No touching,” he said gruffly.

  Vivian sighed, her fingers still outstretched. Now that it was forbidden, all she wanted to do was touch Charlie. Her fingers itched to slide up his sturdy chest and reassure her that he was real and unharmed and as solid as ever. Charlie slumped into the chair at the battered table in the center of the room. He looked unharmed, if a trifle irritated. Like a man who had been fruitlessly protesting his innocence for hours—which he very likely had.

  Finally, she let her arms fall back to her sides. She slid into the chair on the opposite side of the table and leaned forward. “Oh, Charlie,” she said. “How did we get here?”

  Charlie sighed and placed his palms down on the tabletop between them. His fingertips were so close to hers that she could feel the heat of him on her skin.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he said, his voice pitched low. He fixed his unnerving blue-green gaze directly on her.

  Vivian swallowed. He wanted her to say, “I know. Of course you didn’t.” But how could she say that? She didn’t know that for sure. She’d seen what she’d seen.

  “I’m not supposed to ask what happened,” she said, blinking away the memory of those scissors lying on the rug, the sharp blades coated with blood. “Freddy’s orders.” She glanced over at the policeman sitting in his own chair in the corner and studiously pretending not to be listening.

  “I haven’t been charged with anything, Viv. They don’t have any proof. And they won’t have any proof because I didn’t do it.”

  Vivian stared into Charlie’s eyes, looking for a glimmer of reassurance. Her heartbeat slowed as he held her gaze.

  “I’ll be out of here in an hour or so,” Charlie continued in that confident, husky whisper. “You’ll see.”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  “No, you have to get back to the city. You’ve got the trip to Hollywood.”

  “I’ll delay.”

  “I’m not going to stand in the way of your dreams, Viv.”

  “Oh, posh. Don’t be so dramatic. I just mean I’ll head out to California on the next train. What’s the rush?” She smiled, but it was a lie manufactured to ease his mind. She knew very well that she couldn’t miss that train the next evening. The Super Chief left Chicago for LA only twice a week, which meant she’d have to wait until Friday to take the next train to the coast. She’d be days behind the itinerary. She’d miss the screen test at MGM, and she knew how this business worked. If she missed that screen test, she might never get another one.

  “I’d feel better if you held to the plan. Go out to California with Yarborough like you’re supposed to. Smile pretty for the cameras at Dearborn Station.” Vivian looked sharply at him, but despite his words, there was no mocking tone in his voice. “You probably won’t believe this, but it makes my day to open the newspaper and find your gorgeous face smiling back at me.”

  Vivian looked away, embarrassed. Charlie had always pretended to be indifferent to her ambitions in show business, but deep down she knew it meant something to him simply because it meant something to her. But to hear him say it now with that sincerity in his voice made all this real—like he was a dying man who wanted to confess everything he’d kept locked up. Her throat closed up with emotion.

  “Really, Viv. I’ve been in worse scrapes than this. I’ll be fine.”

  She cleared her throat. “Okay,” she said finally, if only to make him stop talking like this. It was so somber, so final. “Uncle Freddy will stay with you. I’ve phoned your father as well. He’s on his way.”

  Charlie’s dark-blond brows rose. “That should be an interesting conversation.”

  “I would think that if there’s anyone on earth who would understand something like this, it would be your father.” Charlie’s father, Charlie Haverman Sr., known as Cal, was a detective as well, retired from the Arlington Heights racetrack. Father and son had worked together for years before Charlie had struck out on his own. Cal had seen his fair share of murders. He’d been acquainted with gangsters, as had Vivian’s father. The fathers’ paths had crossed long before their children’s. Vivian wondered suddenly if there really was such a thing as fate, wondered if every event in her life—in all their lives—had been predetermined, the course plotted from cradle to grave.

  Grave. She thought of Hap, of course, though she didn’t want to. She thought of the way he’d looked at her before he collapsed, as if he’d wanted to say something—to say everything he’d never had a chance to say to her. In the end, he’d said nothing. And that too, she supposed, was an appropriate way to end things. She had come to expect nothing more from him.

  Charlie stared down at his hands on the table, lost in thoughts of his own. Vivian cleared her throat.

  “And then when I come back from California and you’re out of here, we’ll talk all this through,” she said. She glanced at the corner to make sure the guard couldn’t see and then reached out and placed her hand over Charlie’s.

  “You’ll be coming back?”

  “Of course I will. Don’t be ridiculous.” I know you didn’t kill him. She wanted to say the words, but they stuck in her throat.

  He paused for a long moment, fixing her with one of his disarming blue-green gazes. “You’ll think over what I asked you?” he said softly.

  “Maybe,” she said, forcing a teasing lilt into her voice. She considered telling him yes right now to boost his morale, but she glanced around the utilitarian cinder-block room. Vivian wasn’t an old-fashioned girl, but even she knew this wasn’t the time or place to accept a proposal of marriage. She didn’t want to remember this particular moment forever.

  Charlie flipped his hand over and squeezed hers on the tabletop, rubbing his thumb up and down hers lightly, reassuringly. He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “And maybe then we’ll go up to your father’s nice, secluded cabin and spend a leisurely week in bed.”

  A surprised laugh escaped Vivian’s mouth as her eyes moved to the policeman in the corner. He wasn’t looking in their direction, but no doubt, he’d heard the remark. There was no mistaking the knowing smirk on the man’s face.

  Charlie leaned closer.

  “I’ve always wanted to take you up to that cabin and have you all to myself,” he whispered. He winked at her, and then the policeman cleared his throat.

  Vivian glanced down at the table, her cheeks warm. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Charlie’s oddly amorous turn of conversation had flustered her, and she wasn’t one to be easily flustered.

  When she lifted her head, Charlie was staring at her, his mouth set in a determined line. “I’m getting out of here, Viv. One way or another. You’ll see.”

  Chapter Six

  The sun had set, and the light was softening into a mellow, dusky blue by the time Freddy and Vivian left the station around eight thirty. She had to get back to the city, she thought. It was a full day tomorrow—a recording session for The Darkness Knows at the station and then packing for her trip to Los Angeles. The train left at seven fifteen sharp tomorrow evening. But how could she do any of that with Charlie sitting in the police station accused of murder?

  Vivian and Freddy walked silently down the street. Vivian worried her lower lip w
ith her teeth and watched a boy skipping toward them with his mother. He pulled a toy wooden dog on a string behind him, while his mother juggled a bag full of beach things. The public beach was only a block away. It was hard for Vivian to imagine families enjoying a leisurely day on the sand when her world was crumbling around her, but they were, weren’t they? The world kept right on spinning.

  She tried to smile at the boy, but he only stared back at her. When Vivian caught a glimpse of herself in the shiny, black exterior of Freddy’s brand-new Cadillac town car, she knew why. She looked bone-tired, as if she’d aged ten years in a day. Freddy opened the passenger-side door for her, and she slid into the car, her fingers trailing over the buttery tan leather of the bench seat.

  Freddy got into the driver’s seat and paused with his fingers curled around the steering wheel. He looked straight ahead, watching two older women saunter past on the sidewalk in front of the car with half-eaten ice-cream cones.

  “You really didn’t speak of Mr. Prescott’s death?” he finally asked.

  It took Vivian a moment to realize he meant Hap. Mr. Prescott, she thought. No, formality still didn’t suit him. She shook her head. “Not a peep…except for Charlie to insist he didn’t do it. And he didn’t do it, did he?”

  Freddy looked at her for a long moment, his fingers grasping and releasing the steering wheel. “I can tell you as much as he told me, Vivian.”

  “Which was?”

  “That you two had words.”

  Vivian watched Freddy’s expression from the corner of her eye. It hadn’t changed. “Did he tell you what about?”

  “Not at first, but I insisted, and he finally admitted that you’d fought about Mr. Prescott. Specifically, about involvement of a romantic nature that you’d had with Prescott.”

  Vivian swallowed and glanced off into the distance. “Well, I don’t know how romantic it was in retrospect.”

  “Yes, well.” Freddy paused and then charged ahead into the uncomfortable silence. “And Mr. Haverman said he’d proposed marriage to you, and you’d turned him down moments before the incident. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You may have done well to accept him, my dear. As a matter of fact, I advise you to accept him and marry as soon as possible.”

  “Why?” Unease unfurled in her like a suffocating wool blanket.

  “Because you happen to be a very incriminating witness, and if you are Mr. Haverman’s wife, you cannot be forced to testify against him…if it comes to that.”

  Vivian was finding it hard to catch her breath. Testify against Charlie in a murder trial? She knew that might be the endgame, but hearing it from Freddy’s lips gave her a shock like plunging her hand into ice water.

  “Anyway, Charlie said you two had words and he stormed off toward the main house. He said he was trying to find a quiet place to think things through.”

  “And he ran into Hap on the way, and they argued.”

  Freddy shook his head. “He didn’t see anyone he recognized and wasn’t successful in finding an unoccupied space until he came to the game room. He said the doors of the room were closed. He slid them open, entered the room, and slid the doors shut behind him. He thought he was alone at first. Then he saw Mr. Prescott on the far side of the room.”

  “And what did Hap say to him?” Vivian asked, tensing. She was afraid it had to be something related to her. Something that had set Charlie’s temper off.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “He said Mr. Prescott was on the far side of the room hunched over the desk. At first, it looked like he was just looking at whatever was on the desk—loose papers, clippings of some kind. He looked up at Charlie when he heard him enter. Mr. Prescott had his hands clasped to his stomach. Charlie said Mr. Prescott’s eyes widened at the sight of him. They just looked at each other for a moment.”

  “In silence?”

  Freddy nodded. “Then he said Mr. Prescott’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he stumbled forward. Out of impulse, Charlie rushed forward to help. He said Prescott looked sick or hurt. When Charlie reached him, he said Prescott put his hands out to him. Charlie grabbed Prescott’s hands to keep him upright. Charlie said Prescott had something metal in his hand, and it slipped into Charlie’s grasp. There must have been blood all over Prescott’s hands.” Freddy looked down at his own hands. “Charlie said he didn’t even notice the scissors in his hand or the blood until after you came in the door and asked him what he’d done. And then Prescott fell. That’s it.”

  Oh, Charlie, what have you done? That’s what she’d said. She’d seen a bleeding Hap with Charlie looming over him. What else would she think?

  “So Hap handed Charlie the bloody scissors?”

  “According to Charlie.”

  Vivian shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.” If that was the story Charlie was telling the police, no wonder he was still cooling his heels in a holding cell. It was, quite frankly, unbelievable.

  “I’m afraid I have to agree with you. It seems an unlikely story.”

  “Do you think it’s the truth?” Vivian asked, and then held up her hand to ward off Freddy’s answer. “No, don’t tell me what you think. I have to believe he’s telling the truth.”

  Freddy turned the key, and the engine roared to life. He backed the Cadillac away from the curb without further comment.

  As unlikely as Charlie’s story was, what could she do but believe it? Hap certainly hadn’t stabbed himself with those scissors. But if Charlie didn’t do it, who did? And where had they gone?

  • • •

  Freddy didn’t pull all the way up to Oakhaven, at Vivian’s request. He was lodging at a boarding house in town near the police station, and he told her he’d stay there until Charlie was released. Vivian had considered not going back to Oakhaven at all, but she’d left her pocketbook in the parlor when she’d hurried off to see Charlie at the police station.

  Vivian nudged the front door open, intending to sneak in and out as quickly as possible. She stepped inside and then paused just inside the door.

  “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press!” The frantic rattle of a telegraph machine followed. She turned toward the sound of the radio in the front parlor. If Walter Winchell was on the air, it must be eight thirty, Vivian thought. And if the radio was on, someone was likely there listening to it.

  Vivian edged toward the door, picturing someone in the armchair lit by the warm yellow glow of the radio. Perhaps the entire family, sitting stunned and silent in the wake of Hap’s unexpected and startling demise. They’d turn to her, their eyes wide and accusing.

  She poked her head around the doorframe, her heart hammering in her chest, but the parlor was empty. She let her breath out in a sigh as her eyes fell on her pocketbook still sitting on the side table. She picked it up and then walked a few steps toward the radio, drawn by the mellow yellow glow of the dial and the soothing flat noise. She should go, she thought. She was tempting fate by staying one second longer than she needed.

  Winchell was talking about King George and Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the Roosevelts’ summer home in Hyde Park, New York. It had happened just hours earlier. They’d had a picnic with hot dogs and potato salad. Is that what she’d just heard? Before she could comprehend it, the beep-beep-beep of the telegraph machine sounded again, and Winchell had launched into yet another story she couldn’t quite follow.

  “That Roosevelt…serving the king of England hot dogs.” The male voice was both gruff and amused. “I don’t like the man, but I admit that may have been a brilliant move.”

  Vivian’s head jerked up. Uncle Bernard stood in the doorway. Her fingers tightened on her pocketbook. She should have gone when she had the chance.

  “Brilliant?” she said aloud.
It was a stupid response, but she was suddenly terrified of what Bernard might say next. He’d always terrified her. She couldn’t recall ever having had a real conversation with the man. He was big and gruff and had never been around. He’d also never been interested in her as a child. Come to think of it, he hadn’t been terribly interested in his own children either.

  “Humanizes the king. Makes the average American want to give him and his country aid, by extension.”

  Vivian nodded, though she didn’t understand.

  Bernard walked toward her, and the beeping of the telegraph sounded again as Winchell launched into another story.

  She wanted to say something, but what? She was sorry, yes. But sorry didn’t remotely cover it. “About Hap…”

  Bernard held up one large hand. “It was an accident, Vivian,” he said. “A terrible accident.”

  “An accident,” she repeated.

  “Hap… Charlie… What happened in the game room.” He waved a hand in front of him. She took in Bernard’s flushed face, his half-mast eyes. He was half in the bag, she thought. She couldn’t say she blamed him. His surrogate son had just been murdered in his own house. He leaned in toward the radio for another long moment, listening intently.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Hap’s death, Vivian. It was an accident.”

  She shook her head. “How could it be?”

  Bernard narrowed his eyes. He spoke slowly, overarticulating every word. “Well, from what I can figure, Hap must have been sitting at the desk alone and leaned forward suddenly into the scissors. Charlie happened along shortly thereafter. An unfortunate circumstance for all concerned.”

  An unfortunate circumstance?

  “Hap stabbed himself with a pair of scissors…by accident.” Vivian said. The words were so absurd that she almost couldn’t force herself to say them.

  Bernard looked intently at her. “That’s what I’ll tell the police first thing tomorrow morning. All of this will be cleared up, Vivian. Don’t you worry about your detective.”