Dig Deep My Grave

by Cheryl Honigford

  This is really it, she thought. The chance of a lifetime. When else would she get the opportunity to meet someone with as much influence on the film world as Louis B. Mayer? Never, that’s when. What would she do? What would she say to him? Her palms had already gone clammy at the thought.

  “That’s amazing,” she croaked. “How did you manage that?”

  Mr. Banks straightened again, hands clasped over his ample stomach in satisfaction. “I have connections,” he said vaguely.

  “Would you like to join us for dinner?” Graham asked.

  “Oh, no, no,” Banks said, already turning to go. “I promised Mrs. Banks I wouldn’t talk business on the way out to Los Angeles. This train trip’s got romance on her mind.” He shot them a dubious look.

  “Enjoy it,” Graham said jovially. He looked fit to burst himself. And why wouldn’t he? Vivian thought. In a few days, they could be signed to Hollywood contracts. It didn’t seem real. She glanced around. None of this seemed real.

  “Well, well. This turn in our combined luck calls for dessert, I think,” Graham said. He glanced down at the menu. “They have vanilla ice cream…fresh strawberries and cream…”

  Vivian shook her head. The food she had managed to get down sat like a rock in her stomach. “I think I’ll turn in early. It’s been a trying day.”

  Graham quirked a dark brow at her.

  “I’ll walk you to your berth,” he said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.”

  They were silent on the way there. It wasn’t a long walk—perhaps fifty feet or so. Vivian felt the claustrophobia settling in around her like a blanket. She hadn’t traveled much by train, and everything about it was starting to unnerve her. They were hurtling at breakneck speed down a track in the darkness inside a metal cylinder. Even the gentle, rhythmic rocking of the train unsettled her. She doubted she’d sleep at all tonight.

  They reached her door, and she turned before opening it. “Thank you, Graham.”

  “For what?”

  “For being so understanding. For not pressing me to talk about it.”

  Graham’s jaw tensed. “Well, I have to admit that I’m not really that understanding. I’m dying for the details.” He laughed lightly. Then his expression turned serious. “I’m concerned for Charlie too, you know. And you.” He squeezed her shoulder gently and lowered his voice to a whisper. “If you want to talk about it, you know where to find me.”

  “Thank you. I’ll tell you all about it when everything’s cleared up. I promise.” She pulled him into a hug. He patted her back awkwardly before releasing her. She turned and put her hand on the knob and then half turned back toward him. “Hey,” she said. “You called him Charlie. Not Chick.”

  Graham smiled. “I thought it was time I dropped that silly affectation. I’ve tried to make that nickname stick for months, and it just won’t. I know when I’ve been beat.” He shrugged good-naturedly and turned to make his way back down the corridor to his own berth. She smiled at his retreating form with the click-clack of the wheels in the background.

  But her smile faded as she unlocked the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Vivian woke to a short, businesslike rap on her door and sat bolt upright in bed. She’d left Graham’s copy of Murder on the Orient Express splayed open on her chest, and it fell to the floor with a thump. The train was stopped but the engine still thrummed, and a feeble light filtered in through cracks along the sides of the drawn window shade. She picked her watch up from the berth side table. It was 2:12 a.m. The rap sounded again at the door. She jumped from bed, heart hammering, and threw on her chenille robe before she opened the door a crack to find the porter staring gravely down at her.

  “Telegram, miss.” He held a paper out to her.

  She took it, heart thumping even harder now, and held up one finger for the porter to wait. She turned back into the room and rifled blindly through her handbag. She fished a handful of coins from the bottom and returned to the door, dropping them into his palm.

  “Thank you, miss,” he said. He turned to go.

  “Wait,” she said, her fingertips sliding over the smooth surface of the telegram. “Where are we?”

  “Just arrived in Kansas City, miss.”

  Kansas City. Who would be sending her a telegram via Kansas City at 2:12 a.m.? Vivian stepped back into her room and shut the door with the click. She turned on the bedside table lamp and sat on her open berth, ripping the telegram open with trembling fingers.

  MISS VIVIAN WITCHELL ABOARD

  SANTA FE SUPER CHIEF

  C CHARGED—ON LAM—PHONE ME

  FREDDY

  Charged. Charged with murder? How could that be? And what did Freddy mean by “on lam”? He couldn’t mean that Charlie had run. Vivian shook her head and read the telegram all over again. But there wasn’t much to read. Just the same confusing, heartrending line. Charlie had been charged with murder, and he’d somehow escaped police custody. Oh God. Why? He was going to get himself killed.

  What had he said to her at the police station? I’m getting out of here one way or another. You’ll see. She shivered.

  Vivian rang immediately for the porter and began throwing items into her suitcase. She knew enough about the Super Chief’s schedule to know that if she didn’t get off now, here in Kansas City, she’d have to wait hours for the next stop—every click-clack of the wheels taking her further and further west and further and further away from any way to help Charlie. How could she sit helplessly on a train knowing that Charlie was out there somewhere, possibly running for his life? Why had he run? Did that mean he’d killed Hap after all? No, she wouldn’t even entertain that possibility.

  The porter returned, and she thrust her half-latched suitcase at him as she slipped into her shoes. She was still wearing her peignoir, having slipped the jacket of the traveling suit she’d worn earlier over it. She just hoped that at 2:12 a.m., there was no one around the Kansas City station to take much notice of her.

  “I’m disembarking,” she said, plucking her hat from the table and giving the berth a once-over for anything important she might have forgotten.

  “Beg pardon, miss?” The porter’s eyes were wide as the suitcase slipped from his grasp. He bent at the knees and caught it before it could fall to the floor and spill the contents.

  “Getting off the train here. Now.” She had her handbag, money, a change of clothes. That’s all she needed. She moved past him and marched down the corridor, listening for his sharp footsteps to follow her.

  She hopped down the steps onto the platform and turned to retrieve her suitcase. “Can you do me a favor?”

  He nodded, eyes still wide.

  “Please tell Mr. Yarborough that I had to leave. If he can delay in LA, please do so. Otherwise, go ahead without me. Can you remember that?”

  He nodded. “Mr. Yarborough. Miss Witchell had to go. If he can delay in LA, do so. Otherwise, go on without you.”

  “That’s right,” she said. She rummaged in her handbag and then pressed a ten-dollar bill into his hand. “Please go tell him this instant. Wake him if you have to.”

  “Of course, miss,” he said.

  The train’s engine began to rumble, setting the platform vibrating under the thin soles of her shoes. The whistle blew, and the train started its infinitesimal movement forward. The shiny silver wheels whispered on the tracks and picked up speed.

  “I hope everything’s okay, miss,” the porter said, raising his voice to be heard above the noise of the engine.

  I hope so too, she thought.

  Vivian rushed across the empty lobby toward the bank of pay phones on the far wall, her heels clacking madly on the marble floor. She realized she’d given all her change to the porter for his tip, leaving her without even the nickel for a local call. She whirled on her heel toward the newss
tand opposite. She’d assumed it would be closed at this time of the morning, but a solitary light burned inside, and she saw the soles of a pair of shoes propped up on the counter. The man was dozing at his post. She walked up and slapped her hand on the counter. The man jolted awake with a snort, his shoes slipping to land on the floor with a discordant double thump. His eyes widened as if he wasn’t quite sure that this lady in a feathered peignoir and tweed jacket before him was not part of a particularly titillating dream. He opened his mouth and then shut it again.

  “Would it be possible to get some change for the pay phone?” Vivian said impatiently. She pulled the edges of her jacket together.

  The man’s eyebrows went up in sleepy surprise. “Of course.” He paused for such a long time that Vivian thought he’d fallen asleep again with his eyes open. “But you’d have to buy something. I’m not allowed to just give out change, you see.”

  She sighed. She selected a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint and slapped it on the counter, along with a twenty-dollar bill. Then her eyes snagged on her own face staring back at her from the newsstand display.

  It was the latest edition of Radio Stars. There she was, her smiling face in three-quarter profile next to a beaming Graham. The headline underneath read RADIO’S “DARK” STARS SHINE. Vivian exhaled slowly. Being on the cover of this magazine had once been her wildest dream come true, but she felt nothing.

  “Miss, your change?”

  Vivian pulled her eyes from the cover of the magazine.

  “Would you like to buy that too?” he asked. He obviously didn’t recognize her. She pulled her hat down over her eyes anyway.

  “No, thank you.” She took her change and walked off toward the bank of pay phones on the far wall.

  Vivian installed herself in the little wooden cubicle. There were no doors, but a quick glance told her there was no one around to overhear. She dumped the pile of change on the shelf next to the telephone with shaking fingers, then fished out the card where she’d written all of the important telephone numbers she might need on her trip west. She placed a fingernail under Uncle Freddy’s name. Then she plucked the hornlike receiver from its cradle on the left side and slid a nickel into the vertical slot at the top of the telephone, dialing zero when she heard the tone.

  “Number, please,” came a singsong female voice at the other end of the line.

  “I’d like to place a call long distance to Mr. Frederick Endicott in Lake Forest, Illinois, please. The number is CEDar-3455.”

  “Would you like to hold the line or receive a call back when the party answers?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “One moment, please.”

  There was a series of clicks. After an interminable amount of time, the operator came back on the line.

  “Your party is on the line. Please deposit one dollar seventy-five cents for the first three minutes.”

  Vivian plucked coins at random from the pile on the counter and jammed them in. They made a satisfying metallic clank-clunk as they fell into the metal receptacle of the pay phone.

  “Proceed with your call,” the operator said.

  There was another click, and then Freddy’s voice came over the line—low and insistent.

  “Vivian?”

  “Yes, it’s me. I got your telegram. What’s going on?”

  “Charlie’s left.”

  “Left? I don’t understand.”

  “He’s wanted, and he’s disappeared.”

  “Wanted? Why?” That couldn’t be true. That could only mean the police had something against him—enough evidence to charge him with murder.

  “We can’t talk about it over the telephone.”

  Frustration welled in her chest. They couldn’t be sure that the operator had disconnected. She could be listening out there somewhere. The police could be listening, for that matter.

  “Vivian, now this is important. Do you have any idea where Charlie might be?”

  She swallowed. “No,” she said automatically. Why would she? But something niggled at the back of her mind. Where would she go if she were wanted by the police? Where would no one know to look for her?

  “Okay,” Freddy said, sounding unconvinced. “Where are you now?”

  “I’m calling from a pay phone at the Kansas City station.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t have any more information, Viv, but I had to let you know. Get back on the train. Go to California. There’s nothing you can do. And if you hear from Charlie, let me know as soon as possible.”

  “I will. You do the same.”

  “Of course. Goodbye.”

  She replaced the receiver and stood, staring at the telephone. Her mind worked, her foot tapping on the checkered linoleum. Then she collected her things and headed off toward the quiet ticket booth. She hadn’t technically lied to Freddy, she reasoned. She didn’t know where Charlie might be. She knew exactly where he was, and she was going to him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Vivian remembered Louis B. Mayer twenty minutes east of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The thought flitted across her mind as if it were something happening to someone else. She was going to miss her meeting with Louis B. Mayer. The loss of it registered only in the cerebral sense. She felt no panic, had no sweaty palms about losing her one chance to impress the most influential man in Hollywood. Getting to Charlie was the only thing on her mind. She supposed it might bother her once she’d found Charlie and squeezed him tightly and knew he was safe. But first, she had to find him.

  She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, her fingers aching. She had sweaty palms all right, but it had nothing to do with Mr. Mayer. It had to do with Charlie running from the law and the fact that she was driving a 1928 Ford Model A in the deepening dusk of rural Wisconsin without a driver’s license. That, and she had only the vaguest notion of how to get where she needed to go. A rumpled map lay spread out in the passenger seat. She’d studied it before setting off, but she was doubting her memory already, and she might have to pull over soon to verify the route.

  Vivian had reversed her route, catching a train to Minneapolis, then another to Eau Claire, where she’d arrived three hours earlier. She couldn’t get any farther into the north woods by train—and in any case, driving would be faster. There weren’t any cars for hire in Eau Claire—none that would take her into the north woods—but the man at the ticket counter at the train station had told her his brother Irv was selling a 1928 Model A in great shape.

  She had bought the Ford for fifty dollars cash without so much as kicking the tires. When she’d turned on the waterworks and laid it on thick with a story about a sick mother in Minocqua, Irv had thrown in a full tank of gas. But it was becoming apparent that she’d been the one taken for a ride. The tires were bald. She’d learned that the hard way by skidding around the curve of the dirt road, her heart in her throat as she nearly sank the rear of the car into a ditch. She’d fishtailed for a heart-stopping five seconds or so before she got the car under control.

  The interior reeked of stale cigarettes, so she’d been forced to drive with the window rolled down and the chill air numbing the left side of her face. It had taken her the full first hour to learn the nuances of the finicky clutch. And a high-pitched clicking noise had started from somewhere near the right side of the engine. It would seem kind-hearted Irv from Eau Claire had lied to her. The cad had sold a grieving woman a jalopy.

  She was just glad that she knew how to drive. If this had happened six months ago, she’d have been up the veritable creek without a paddle. Charlie had been teaching her to drive for the past couple of months. Off and on—whenever his nerves could take it. She had enthusiasm to spare, but her attention wasn’t always up to par. As with most things she attempted, she thought ruefully. Charlie liked to clutch his hat to his chest and then fan himself like an old lady with the vapors when Vivian failed to yield or popped the clutch go
ing out of first gear. It made her laugh, and that’s precisely why he did it. Her heart thumped hard with love for him.

  Dusk was rapidly turning to night. She just hoped the Model A would refrain from breaking down until she reached her father’s cabin on Cranberry Lake. Each pothole jangled her nerves as well as her bones. Charlie had to be there. Where else would he go? He’d never been to the cabin, but she’d told him all about it, including how to find the nearly hidden turnoff. A sign appeared out of the darkness. This was her turnoff. She had to get off the relative safety and comfort of the state highway and onto the side roads now. The unpaved roads. The potholed roads. The roads thick with dark woods on either side—the dark woods frequented by black bears.

  Her entire body tensed as she made the left turn onto the dirt road. She didn’t know how far she was from the cabin, and she wished she’d paid more attention the few times she’d been up here with her father. The headlights sent two columns of weak yellow light into the darkness—just two feeble pinpoints of light against the dark that closed in on both sides. Her eyes darted from left to right, right to left, hunting for any sign of an animal in the underbrush about to burst onto the roadway in front of her. She was so intent on her mission that she almost missed the turnoff to the cabin. But there it was. A tiny, rutted track, hidden among a wild tangle of bushes and saplings. She hitched in a breath and turned, hoping to God this was the right place because there would be nowhere to turn around until she reached the end of this track—wherever that might be.

  Just as Vivian was about to give up, there stood the little cabin. It was completely dark, locked up tight. There weren’t any cars out front. The shutters were closed and latched over every window. Charlie wasn’t here.

  She sat in the car for a long moment, the engine idling. Her mind skittered over the possibilities. She’d been so certain. Vivian thought again of his oddly amorous talk in the jail. Charlie had specifically mentioned this cabin. Where else could he possibly be? Surely he hadn’t gone back to Chicago, where the law could find him in an instant. And surely he wouldn’t ask his father for help. He’d want to keep his old man out of any trouble. She stared at the cabin. An owl hooted somewhere nearby, and Vivian flinched. Finally, she pried her sore fingers from the steering wheel and shut the car off, grabbing the flashlight from the passenger seat. She might as well have a look around.