Dig Deep My Grave

by Cheryl Honigford

  “I’m fine, Graham. Really.” He squeezed her hand—once, quickly—and then let go.

  “Any word from Chick?” he said out of the side of his mouth.

  She shook her head.

  “A photo with the stars of The Darkness Knows?” someone shouted.

  “Of course,” Vivian said with a smile. Time to perform, she thought. Frances had sidled back up to them at the mention of photos, and Vivian deftly bumped her out of frame with her hip. Then she looped her arm around Graham’s trim waist and turned toward the cameras, smiling brightly. Flashbulbs popped, blindingly white in the dimness of the platform. Vivian strained to keep her eyes open, her smile relaxed.

  “I hear this is your first trip on the Super Chief,” someone yelled from the back.

  “That’s right,” Vivian said. “I’m very much looking forward to it. I’ve heard so many marvelous things about its amenities.”

  “What’s the first thing you’re going to do onboard?”

  “Have a nice, big drink,” she said. The gaggle of reporters erupted into guffaws.

  “How about a picture with the engine, Mr. Yarborough?” The engine of the Super Chief was done up in the red-and-yellow warbonnet style of the Plains Indians. Quite striking. Too bad the photos wouldn’t be printed in color.

  Graham raised his eyebrows at her in a silent question.

  “You go on,” Vivian said. She was suddenly bone weary.

  Frances made to follow Graham, but Vivian grabbed her arm and held her back. Frances turned to her with a sigh, pulling her arm irritably from Vivian’s grasp. Vivian smiled sweetly back at her.

  “Frances, darling, what a surprise to see you here. I expect your agent’s lurking around somewhere?” Vivian made a show of glancing around the platform, scanning for the pudgy, balding figure that had been Frances’s constant companion for the past six months.

  “Oh, him,” Frances snorted. “I dropped him a few weeks ago.” She pulled a compact out of her handbag, opened it, and studied her lipstick. She wiped away a smudge with the tip of her pinkie in a perfect show of studied nonchalance.

  Vivian’s hand flew to her chest in feigned shock. She’d known this already, of course. Gossip swirled at the station about everything and everyone, but she just couldn’t miss the opportunity at a dig—especially when Frances had been so condescending over acquiring said agent in the first place. “But I thought he was doing wonders for your career. Wasn’t he going to get you a screen test for Scarlett O’Hara?”

  Frances frowned at her reflection and smoothed her luxuriously shiny black waves of hair behind her ears. Then she snapped the compact shut with a sigh. “Arnie was a loafer,” she said dismissively. She looked off toward Graham and the reporters at the front of the train. “I’ll get another agent. A better one.”

  One that isn’t just a con trying to make time with her, Vivian thought. She wondered if that sweaty, bald man had made time with Frances through the force of a couple of insincere promises about getting her a contract with a movie studio. The thought made Vivian’s skin crawl.

  “What are you doing here, Frances? Don’t tell me you were just in the neighborhood.”

  Frances turned slightly away from Vivian with a brilliant smile. A flashbulb popped. Frances was like a bloodhound for cameras, Vivian thought. Then the photographer moved off toward Graham, and the smile disappeared as Frances leaned toward Vivian. “Now that you and Graham are kaput, you don’t mind if I give him a go, do you?”

  Vivian almost laughed. Frances was as transparent as a pane of glass. “Why would you even bother to ask, Frances? Isn’t your MO to just take what you want?”

  Frances cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “I could snatch him away from you in my sleep, my dear, if I had to. But I thought we were playing nice of late. Perhaps I’ve misread the situation?”

  Playing nice? That was a laugh. Take him, Vivian thought. Frances could take Graham anywhere she wanted. She wouldn’t get far. She wondered how long someone like Frances would put up with nothing more than polite dinner conversation and pecks on the cheek. Vivian glanced over at Graham holding court with a gaggle of reporters beside the engine and bit down a smile. Vivian suspected that Frances wanted quite a bit more from Graham than he was willing to give. She’d be in for a struggle. Would Graham take her into confidence? He’d have to eventually.

  “You have my blessing,” Vivian said. “He’s no bowl of cherries, you know.”

  Frances’s sapphire eyes rolled heavenward. “What man is? I’ll suffer a few pits for a leg up.”

  A leg up, Vivian thought, containing a smile. Well, she certainly won’t get that.

  Graham had returned, the reporters following closely behind him. The group laughed at something Graham said. He could be so charming when he wanted to be.

  The conductor followed behind. “All aboooard!” he shouted.

  The train whistle blew, and the big diesel engine thrummed. Graham hopped up the first three steps of the unfolded staircase before turning around, holding a hand out to Vivian. She took it and paused halfway up the steps. “Turn back and smile,” she told Graham. They both turned back from their position on the stairs, their hands raised in farewell. Flashbulbs popped. That was the shot that would be in the papers tomorrow, she thought with satisfaction. And Frances had been nowhere in sight.

  Chapter Ten

  The Super Chief was a marvel of modern engineering. Vivian had never been on a mode of transportation so luxurious, including the ocean liner on which her family had crossed the Atlantic when she was twelve. She’d freshened up in her own compartment, a luxurious double berth with its own sitting room and powder room, and now she sat in the observation car, the Navajo, next to Graham, who was puffing away on a Cuban cigar.

  She took in the sand-colored carpeting, the copper walls, and the turquoise ceiling. Vivian had never been among the Navajo, had never been anywhere near the desert Southwest, but she’d heard that the train’s decor had been taken directly from those ancient motifs. The porter had told her that the upholstery on the chairs and sofas was based on the design of an authentic bayeta blanket that the interior designer had found in New Mexico. Vivian smoothed her hand over the cushion absently. She wished she were of a mind to enjoy it more.

  A copy of Along the Way sat splayed on her lap, a brightly colored photo of the Super Chief’s engine with its red-and-yellow warbonnet displayed on the cover. She’d been fruitlessly trying to read about the locations the train would speed past. It would only take about forty hours to cover the two thousand miles from Chicago to Los Angeles. The Super Chief was a marvel of speed and efficiency all right, but that speed and efficiency also made Vivian claustrophobic.

  The train wouldn’t stop at any platform for more than a minute or so until they reached Kansas City sometime in the early hours of tomorrow morning. She couldn’t get off this train before then if she wanted to, no matter what happened. She glanced at Graham. He sat back in his armchair and tapped a long ash into the freestanding tray at the edge of his armrest. He caught her eye and stubbed the cigar out.

  “Tops in luxury, I’d say,” he said, easing back into his seat again. She’d say so too. It cost the average American a month’s salary for a lesser berth on the train, and it was even more for her splendid double bedroom.

  She followed Graham’s gaze out the windows at the night-shaded countryside streaming past. The train’s horn blasted faintly and consistently as they passed through the small towns that dotted the landscape. But this room was a warm, yellow cocoon where the outside world was of no consequence. At least it was to everyone else. She looked around at the other well-heeled passengers, who seemed to be mostly businessmen and their exquisitely coiffed wives. Vivian recognized no one. No other celebrities were onboard this trip. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine that everything in her outside world was fine as well. She opened
them again almost immediately. How could she be expected to sit on this train for the next forty hours without any sort of contact? She’d go crazy. She gripped the arms of her chair.

  Graham leaned down to a bag at his feet. He pulled a script out and held it up. CARLTON COFFEE HOUR, it said on the title page. She and Graham were going to guest star on next Sunday’s show. The show had originated in Chicago at WCHI. Graham and Vivian had worked with nearly every actor on that show before it moved to Hollywood late the previous year. Marjorie Fox’s old costar on The Golden Years, Little Sammy Evans, had jumped ship to warmer climes with The Carlton Coffee Hour shortly after Marjorie’s demise and had gone on to great success.

  “Do you want to run lines with me?” Graham asked.

  Vivian didn’t, but she nodded anyway. Anything to distract herself. It was rather a clever script, a parody of The Darkness Knows with the lead characters flipped on their heads. Vivian played the gumshoe and Graham her sidekick. It would get laughs, she had no doubt. If she could hit her lines, that was. She didn’t have much experience with comedy.

  Graham leaned to his right, resting the open script between them on the arms of their chairs so they could both see it. He pointed at her to start.

  “Say, doll,” she said gruffly. “What’s with the long face?”

  There was a note under that: Pause for laughter. The Carlton Coffee Hour was broadcast in front of a live studio audience. That was something else Vivian had no practical experience with. This entire trip to California was uncharted territory for her.

  “Oh, Lorna,” Graham said, his voice high and breathy. “It’s this rope the kidnapper has left on my wrists. It’s got me tangled up in knots.”

  Vivian sighed. That was a terrible joke. Would anyone really laugh at that?

  “Viv.”

  “Hmm?” She looked up. Graham was pointing to something in the script.

  “Your line.”

  “I’m sorry, Graham. I’m afraid I can’t concentrate. Maybe we can try it later?”

  “Of course.” He pulled the script away and reached down to put it back in his bag. He rummaged for a few seconds. “Would you like something to read? Take your mind off things?”

  He pulled out a book and handed it to her. It was bound in a colorful dust jacket with a moss-green cover that showed a man shoveling coal into the blazing engine of a steam locomotive.

  “Well, don’t you have a morbid sense of humor,” she said.

  “Morbid?”

  “Or do you find it soothing to read about grisly murder on a train while…on a train?” Vivian smoothed her fingertips over the raised type: Agatha Christie—Poirot Solves a…Murder on the Orient Express. Graham’s dark brows drew together in distress.

  “Ah, hmm. You see, the…coincidence hadn’t occurred to me.” He gave her an embarrassed half smile. “Does it bother you? I mean, with Chick…”

  She pinched her lips together and looked over her shoulder out the window behind her seat. “No,” she said. She had only been making a joke, and it had backfired on her. She turned back to him and lowered her voice to scarcely above a whisper. “Charlie didn’t murder anyone. Besides, I’m sure he’s out of jail by now.” Her voice was light, but her stomach constricted. She’d half expected Charlie to show up at the station to see her off, rumpled and whiskered, that beautiful lopsided grin lighting his face. But he hadn’t, of course.

  Graham just nodded. He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, his usually smoldering dark eyes now brimming with concern.

  “Say, how’s he getting on?”

  Fine. The lie was on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t want to discuss any of this. If she didn’t discuss it, she might be able to pretend it wasn’t happening. “I don’t know,” she said instead, swallowing the lump in her throat.

  “I thought you said it was a misunderstanding and that it would all be smoothed over.”

  “I know I did. It’s just… Well, the situation’s more complicated than I thought.”

  Graham leaned forward and said in a barely audible whisper, “Who’s he supposed to have killed… If you don’t mind me asking?”

  Vivian found she didn’t mind the asking as much as searching for an appropriate response. How should she describe Hap to someone who didn’t know him or her history with him? An old flame? Her first love?

  “A family friend,” she said, picking at the paper dust jacket of the book in her lap.

  “He killed a friend of the family…of your family?”

  “He didn’t kill anyone,” Vivian hissed.

  Graham held up both hands in surrender. “Sorry,” he said.

  “I’d just prefer not to discuss it…not right now.” She felt her cheeks grow warm, and she glanced around, but no one in the smoking car seemed to take any notice of their whispered conversation. Then she looked down at the book, the orange-and-yellow tongues of fire leaping from the coal furnace on the cover. She passed her fingertips over the image. “Why this book?” she asked, desperate to change the subject.

  Graham blinked. He looked down at the cover again. “Frances gave it to me. She thinks I should adapt it for radio.”

  “Adapt it?”

  “Yes, for the Sultan’s Gold Paragons of Literature program,” he said.

  Besides being a mouthful to say, it was a monthly program on which Graham and a team of writers adapted a famous work of literature for a radio audience. It had all started with Graham’s adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which had aired locally in the Chicago area this past New Year’s Day. Sultan’s Gold had liked it so much that they decided to sponsor further forays into paragons of literature.

  “And it would give me a fine platform to practice my French accent.”

  “French.” Vivian heard herself mindlessly repeating everything Graham said, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Her brain was operating as if stuck in low gear.

  Graham’s brows drew together as he regarded her. “The detective is an eccentric Belgian chap named Hercule Poirot, you see,” he said. “Ever read any Christie?”

  She shook her head.

  “She ees quite good, n’est-ce pas?”

  Vivian smiled. “It needs a bit of work,” she said, meaning his accent, not the book.

  He smiled affably in return. “Keep it, if you like. It might help take your mind off things.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Say, where’s Banks? He’s aboard, isn’t he?”

  “He’s supposed to be, but I haven’t seen him.” She hoped the station’s head of publicity had missed the train, actually. He was not among her favorite people, and she just wanted to be able to stew in peace until they reached Los Angeles rather than be forced into strategy sessions about making their mark in Hollywood.

  “Where do you think we are right now?” Graham asked.

  She lifted Along the Way. “Would you like to see if we can puzzle it out?”

  “Sure. Give me a little of the local color.”

  “Well, we’ve only been moving for an hour, so I suspect we’re scarcely outside the Chicago suburbs.” She turned the page and moved her finger down to the entry in the middle of the page and began reading. “‘Lemont, Illinois. The name means “Little Mountain.” Elevation 594. Two aluminum production plants; view of drainage canal. Oil refinery three miles west.’”

  “Drainage canal, eh?”

  Vivian laughed and tapped the book with her finger. “Right. On second thought, I think I actually prefer the grisly murder on a train.”

  • • •

  Dinner was a formal affair in the Cochiti car. White-gloved waiters served them fresh lobster cocktail and Romanoff caviar. The menu included such delicacies as calf’s sweetbreads and filet mignon, though Vivian and Graham had both opted for the chicken à la king for their main course. Vivian ate little and spoke even less. She occasionall
y managed to smile when Graham cracked a corny joke in an effort to lighten the mood. He hadn’t asked her once about Charlie, though she could see the desire to written all over his movie-star face.

  The main course had just been served when Graham looked up and locked eyes with someone behind her. He smiled, his fake Graham Yarborough dazzler, and leaned back in his chair.

  “There you are, Banks,” Graham said. “Viv and I were afraid you’d missed the train.”

  Vivian turned to find Mr. Banks walking up the aisle toward them. He stopped beside their table, an uncharacteristic smile on his round face.

  “Glad I ran into you two,” he said. “I have some brilliant news. Brilliant.”

  Vivian took a sip of her wine and waited. Mr. Banks had the tendency to overstate things. She’d judge for herself if the news merited the “brilliant” rating or not. Mr. Banks paused for dramatic effect. He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  “I received word just before boarding that Mr. Mayer is very interested in meeting personally with both of you,” he said.

  “Mr. Mayer…” Vivian said. She looked to Graham and then back to Mr. Banks. She must have misheard. Or perhaps he was referring to another Mr. Mayer in Hollywood? Surely, he couldn’t be serious, but Mr. Bank’s face was the picture of delighted reserve. In fact, he looked proud enough to burst.

  Graham completed Vivian’s sentence for her. “As in Louis B. Of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer? That Mr. Mayer?” he said. Vivian turned to him as a dazzling smile unfurled across his face.

  “The very same.”

  Vivian swallowed, a lump of the delicious chicken à la king wedged in her throat. She took a long sip of her wine, but it didn’t help. She’d assumed she and Graham were small potatoes, minor radio stars who would be passed off to underlings to handle at the movie studio. But somehow, this little publicity man had stolen a meeting for the two of them with the most powerful man in Hollywood. She looked at Mr. Banks in shock. He was good at his job after all.