Come Hell or Highball

by Maia Chance

  I was about to turn away from the window when a manservant stepped into view beside the pool. He carried a tray with a drink on it. Something about his swagger caught my eye.

  The manservant bent down beside Bruno. Bruno said something without lifting his face. The manservant placed the drink on the table beside Bruno’s lounge, and straightened.

  Then he looked right up to my window.

  Well, well. Mr. Ralph Oliver.

  My fingernails clawed into the drapes.

  Ralph tucked the tray under his arm, grinned up at me. And winked. I snapped the drapes shut.

  * * *

  Hibbers arrived with my highball minutes later.

  “Thanks,” I said after a bracing swallow. “Nectar of the gods.”

  “You are very kind, madam.” He turned to go.

  “Wait,” I said. “Is there any new help here at Dune House? Besides you, I mean.”

  “Not as such, although Mrs. Arbuckle has hired a few extra servants for the weekend. From a temporary staffing agency. She did not wish for her motion picture guests to want for anything. Shall I take Cedric for a perambulation on the lawns, and then a light repast in the kitchen, madam?”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful. I’ll dig up his leash.”

  Moments later, Cedric frisked away with Hibbers without so much as a backward glance.

  I sipped my highball and fumed while I dressed for dinner. Obviously, Ralph Oliver was here at Dune House because I was. But he’d beat me here. Which meant that he hadn’t followed me. He’d known I was coming to Dune House in advance, so must have overheard my conversation with Ruby Simpkin last night at the Frivolities.

  And that meant he was investigating something to do with Alfie selling that film reel to Horace Arbuckle. Or else, he was really investigating me.

  Either way, phooey.

  I wriggled and buckled myself into a long girdle. I pulled on black silk stockings, clipped them to my garters, and straightened my seams. I chose jet-beaded François Pinet high heels and a slinky black evening gown with a plunging neckline. I might not have a swizzle stick build, but with the right brassiere, my décolleté is probably worth writing home about. I caught myself wondering if Ralph Oliver would approve.

  I gave myself a mental slap and polished off my highball. Then I patched up my mascara and lipstick, and headed downstairs.

  I decided to make a detour past Horace’s study. Maybe I could weasel in there, somehow pry open the safe, get the film reel, and be gone. On the way, I half hoped I’d bump into Mr. Oliver so I could give him a piece of my mind.

  No dice; I didn’t see a soul.

  The study door stood about four inches open, and the room was lit up inside. I peeked in with one eye.

  Zowie. I blinked. Was that really—? Yes. It was.

  Horace Arbuckle was half-sprawled on his desk, in the throes of some kind of amorous tangle with a lady. She was crouched, and there were a lot of pink, fleshy limbs. Horace grunted, and I saw a lady’s flushed face, framed in gray hair.

  I ran away down the hallway so fast, I almost turned an ankle.

  * * *

  When I arrived in the drawing room, only Hibbers was there.

  He glided past button-tufted furniture, palms potted in Ming, and tasteful bric-a-brac to deliver a highball to me. “Madam.”

  “Oh brother,” I said. “I really oughtn’t start on a second one yet.” I took it, anyway. I needed something to erase the image of Horace Arbuckle Greco-Roman wrestling with that lady. “Where is everyone else?”

  “The Arbuckle household, madam, runs on an exceptionally late schedule.”

  “I’ll go outside and putter around a little, then. Thanks, Hibbers.”

  Outside on the flagstone terrace, the night air tasted of salt, and stars dappled the sky. The lawn was dark, except for rectangles of light shining down from the house’s windows. Beyond the lawn stood a tall, shadowy hedge.

  I gasped. Dark figures crept across the far edge of the lawn, along the base of the hedge. I squinted. Yes. Three figures. I heard a woman’s voice. Heavy breathing. Was the woman barking … commands? The figures veered left and moved into a rectangle of light on the lawn.

  Maybe I’d drunk one highball too many. Because what I thought I saw, galumphing toward me, were two roly-poly young boys driven along by a lady with some kind of stick.

  The lady was twenty-odd years old, rail-thin, with a ferret’s face pulled taut by a bun. The boys, of course, were Olive and Horace’s progeny, Billy and Theo. They wore shorts, tennis shirts, and canvas tennis shoes that glowed in the half light. Yet their pudgy midriffs and doughy knees were a far cry from those of tennis players. Poor dears.

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Woodby,” the elder boy, Billy, said, panting. He stopped at the base of the terrace steps.

  “Hello, Billy,” I said. “Out for a spot of exercise?”

  “Billy!” the lady barked. “March!”

  “Is that your … trainer?” I whispered to Billy.

  “Nanny Potter,” he said miserably. Then he was off, with Theo and Nanny Potter right behind.

  “Fat little things,” Olive said, sidling up to me.

  I jumped.

  Olive glistened, long and narrow, in a green beaded evening gown. She held a venomous-looking cocktail. “Take after their father. I do my absolute utmost to slim them, I swear, but it’s hopeless. They always scrounge things up, somehow. If Cook serves them broth and boiled turnips for dinner, they turn around and hit up the chauffeur for chocolate bars. If Nanny Potter drives them for an extra lap in the evening, Cook tells me an entire bowl of custard has gone missing from the icebox.” She sipped her drink. “I keep them locked up now.”

  My eyes widened. “Your children?”

  “No, no. The icebox, and the pantry. Oh, do look. Eloise has finally come down. You know Eloise Wright, don’t you?”

  I turned.

  And promptly choked on my drink. I was face-to-face with the lady I’d seen writhing with Horace in his study.

  “Oh, hello,” I said, extending my hand. “How lovely to meet you, Mrs. Wright.”

  In fact, I already knew Eloise Wright by reputation, since we swam in the same social circles. But I’d never actually seen her until that discomfiting instant in Horace’s study.

  Eloise was the very definition of a Society Matron: partridge plump, draped in a square acre of lilac chiffon, upswept steel-wool hair, tremulous diamond earrings, posture of a war general.

  “Eloise is the Girdle Queen,” Olive said to me after introductions. “Haven’t you heard? She’s grown quite famous.”

  “Oh, she exaggerates,” Eloise said. “I’ve only got a little business, tucked away inside Gerald’s Fifth Avenue store.”

  “Gerald is her husband, of course,” Olive said. She gestured with her drink. Inside the drawing room, Horace Arbuckle (now, thank goodness, fully clothed) was speaking with a puny fellow in a too-big evening jacket. Gerald Wright had Coca-Cola bottle glasses, an amphibious face, and a bald spot. “You know, Lola. Gerald Wright. Of Wright’s Department Stores.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I simply adore Wright’s.” I used to adore it, anyway. I no longer had enough cabbage to shop there.

  “Horace and Gerald are in business together,” Olive said. “Horace sells a line of fancy tinned things—pâté and caviar and so on—in the food halls at the Wright’s stores.”

  “And you sell girdles?” I asked.

  “Sell really isn’t the proper word. Of course, yes, I do sell them. But I consider myself more of an engineer. Foundation garments, dear, are as critical to a lady’s turnout as foundations are critical to a house.” Eloise surveyed my figure. “You are precisely the sort of lady who forms the bulk of my clientele.”

  Maybe it was because she’d used the word bulk, but if she called me Society Matron, I was going to scream.

  “Elegant, well dressed,” Eloise said, “but in need, due to the ravages of gravity and rich foods, of additional buttr
essing.”

  I unclenched my teeth and poured the remainder of my highball through.

  “Come to the Foundations Department sometime, at the Wright’s on Fifth Avenue,” she said. “I’ll see if there is anything I can do.”

  My self-esteem lay in rubble around my François Pinet shoes. And then, as luck would have it, two gorgeous men sauntered into the drawing room.

  All right, three men sauntered in, if you counted George Zucker. But hangdog George was utterly eclipsed by the arrival of Bruno Luciano and some other tall, dark stranger.

  “Sweet snugglepups,” Olive said. “Suddenly it’s rather like cocktail hour on Mount Olympus, isn’t it?”

  “If you like that sort of thing,” Eloise said. She sipped her pink cocktail. I was pretty sure her eyes strayed to Horace.

  There is simply no accounting for taste.

  George stopped to chat with Horace and Gerald. Bruno and the other man joined us on the terrace, and Olive made the introductions.

  Bruno Luciano had a rubber doll’s perfection, and I wondered how much oil he’d used to gloss his suntan. His eyes were the same liquid brown that they appeared to be on the silver screen.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Woodby,” Bruno said, his voice high and piping.

  No wonder Sadie Street had called him Mr. Pipsqueak.

  Olive, beside me, was breathing in rasps. Bruno’s voice didn’t bother her a bit.

  The other man was introduced as Mr. Ptolemy Fitzpatrick.

  “Call me Lem,” he said. His voice was gravelly, and his palm was rough. He was dashing in that half-hungover way, with stray locks of hair, five o’clock shadow, and purple half moons beneath scary dark eyes.

  He was what you’d call a Wrong Number.

  “Lem is another of Horace’s business associates,” Olive said.

  “Tin cans,” Lem said. “Arbuckle needs ’em, and I got ’em. I won’t bore you ladies with the details. Hey, where’s the gramophone, Mrs. Arbuckle?”

  “Call me Olive. Mrs. sounds so … ancient.”

  “Can’t have cocktails without jazz,” Lem said. “Steer me toward the old horn, why dontcha?”

  Lem set Duke Ellington spinning, and Hibbers dragged some furniture out of the way. Bruno and Olive started dancing, and then Horace swept Eloise out onto the carpet, too.

  Gerald Wright slumped against the wall near the gramophone, watching Horace and his wife dancing cheek to cheek. His stare was angry-hot enough to steam up those thick glasses of his.

  George Zucker edged up to me. “Dance, Mrs. Woodby?”

  “I’m a widow,” I said. But I gave him my hand, anyway.

  “Have you ever suffered from unrequited love, Mrs. Woodby?” George asked.

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “Well, you’re lucky, then. It’s hell. Sheer hell. Enough to make you want to—to kill someone.”

  “Good heavens. Don’t do that, Mr. Zucker.”

  Despite his angst, George was a wonderful hoofer. We kicked and waggled, working up a sweat to sultry tunes riding on bouncy bass lines.

  Then Sadie Street put in an appearance.

  Between spins with George, I caught sight of her in the doorway, a lithe vision in yellow, her bob pomaded to a golden helmet. She glared at Bruno, who was in mid-whirl with Olive.

  Then—I craned my neck as George spun me around again, narrowly missing a floor lamp—Bruno saw Sadie. His face went stiff. He released Olive from his arms, mid-dip. Olive crashed to the carpet, legs splayed and hair tufting.

  Someone brought the gramophone to a nails-on-the-chalkboard stop.

  Silence.

  Horace went over to Olive.

  “Help me, you big oaf!” Olive yelled. He complied.

  Sadie and Bruno’s eyes, meanwhile, were locked like two fighting roosters in the pit.

  George was the first to speak. “Sadie, darling, how was your nap?”

  Sadie ignored him. “Well, well,” she said to Bruno. “Looks like Mr. Pipsqueak’s in the middle of another one of his embarrassing screen tests.”

  “My embarrassing screen tests?” Bruno said.

  “And how nice to see you’ve taken up dancing,” Sadie said. “Again. Just like old times at Philippe’s.”

  This question held some kind of weighty significance; Bruno’s face turned mauve. “How dare you?”

  “How dare you?” Sadie marched up to Bruno and slapped his cheek. It was quite the cinematic spectacle: a lock of Bruno’s hair came loose across his forehead, and fury boiled in his lustrous eyes. Sadie glowered, chin tilted, her beauty glowing from within.

  Wow. If Pantheon Pictures could catch this kind of thing on film, they’d have a humdinger on their hands.

  Sadie swanned out of the drawing room.

  Hibbers—he has impeccable timing—appeared with a tray of martinis. Everyone lunged for a drink. The gramophone blared up again.

  7

  I despise pimento-stuffed olives, yet I snatched one of the martinis from Hibbers’s tray. No time to hang on for a highball. I took an icy swallow.

  Through the French doors, I glimpsed motion on the lawn and heard a familiar yap.

  Cedric.

  I slipped out onto the terrace. Cedric was cavorting on the shadowy grass, his leash held by a tall man. I frowned. Yes, a tall man in servant’s livery. With an annoying swagger. His back was to me, and he was whistling a ditty up into the sky.

  “Hey!” I whispered.

  He didn’t turn.

  I glanced over my shoulder, into the drawing room. Everyone was dancing and dipping their bills.

  I turned back to Ralph. “Hey!”

  Still, he didn’t turn. What was that he was whistling—“Bugle Call Rag”? Or was it something from … a Puccini opera?

  No, couldn’t be.

  I plucked the olive from my martini, aimed, and lobbed it through the darkness. It hit Ralph square in the bean.

  He turned. When he saw me, his face lit with a slow smile. His eyes meandered south to take in my gown. On the way back up, they lingered on my front bumpers. “Hey, Mrs. Woodby. Nice dress.”

  “I have a good mind to throw my drink in your face for following me here.”

  “You wouldn’t do that. You need that drink so’s to get through the evening with this pack of goofs.”

  I wobbled (had my François Pinets always been so precarious?) down the terrace steps and across the grass. Cedric squiggled a greeting. I stooped to pat his head.

  “Gonna bust my chops like that starlet did to Mr. Luciano?” Ralph said.

  “You’ve been spying on us?” I straightened.

  “Just walking the dog.”

  “Why are you following me?”

  “Like I told you, I’m investigating a matter to do with your late husband.”

  “Does it have anything to do with … with a film reel, by any chance?”

  His eyes glittered. “Film reel?”

  Maybe he hadn’t heard my conversation with Ruby Simpkin in her dressing room. Or maybe he was one swell actor.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Listen, Mr. Oliver, I don’t believe for a second that you’re investigating Alfie. I think you’re investigating me.”

  His eyes landed on my mouth. “I’d like to be investigating you.”

  “I know you are, and I do not approve. Cease and desist.”

  Ralph chuckled. “Maybe you’re used to pulling that high-and-mighty routine on other fellas, but it’s not gonna work on me, all right?”

  “For a man who’s playing valet to a toy Pomeranian, you certainly have brass.”

  “You’re broke, Mrs. Woodby. They don’t know it yet—” He gestured with his chin to the drawing room. “—but I know. And I dug up some other real interesting things, too.”

  I licked my lips. “Oh?”

  “Number five Polk Street, Scragg Springs, Indiana—ring a bell?”

  “I can’t say that it does.”

  I turned and reeled back across the lawn, onto
the terrace, and inside.

  * * *

  Dinner consisted of broth, watercress salad (no dressing), steamed vegetables, parboiled codfish, and far too much tipply. I was still shaky from my encounter with Ralph Oliver, and I was speeding toward the four-cocktail mark. If I didn’t get some substantial food into my engine, my tubes were going to be coursing 100 proof.

  Once we hit the codfish, Gerald and Eloise wheeled out their marital misery.

  “It’s the goddam seconds,” Gerald said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Olive said, swilling a martini.

  “All the corsets that my darling wife tosses aside when she comes up with a new design.”

  “It’s called innovation, dear,” Eloise said.

  “It’s called a big fat waste.”

  “No, no,” Horace said. “Her girdles are scientific.”

  I suppose Horace was obliged to leap to Eloise’s defense after their little tête-à-tête in the study earlier.

  “What do you do with the seconds?” Lem asked. “Turn ’em into battleships?”

  Eloise tilted her nose. “I no longer use steel boning in my designs. This is all very top secret, you understand—”

  “Innovation,” her husband said.

  “—but I have begun to experiment with corsets—well, girdles, properly speaking—”

  “What’s the difference?” Lem asked.

  Why was Lem so interested in ladies’ unmentionables, anyway? He looked like the type who concerned himself only with peeling the things off a girl.

  Horace shifted in his chair. “Should we really be speaking of ladies’ undergarments?”

  “Why not?” Olive snapped.

  “The difference between a corset and a girdle,” Eloise said, “is that a girdle stretches with the body, while a corset is stiff. Of recent date, manufacturers have begun to sew elastic panels into their corsets, rendering them, technically speaking, girdles. But I have invented something quite new, something extraordinary.”

  “Rubber girdles,” Gerald said.

  “Gerald!” Eloise whispered. She sighed. “I didn’t mean to give the whole thing away. Why, anyone could take my invention and steal it. The patents are still pending.”