Come Hell or Highball

by Maia Chance

  My eyes flooded with tears. One of them spilled down my cheek.

  Rats.

  “And you know what?” Ralph said. “It’s mostly not that bad. You’re going to be okay. You’re smart.” He smeared the tear away with a fingertip. “You’re beautiful.”

  More tears trickled. What the heck was the matter with me? Wait—he thought I was smart? And beautiful?

  “Besides,” he said, “you’ve got your Swedish sidekick.”

  “Berta’s only in this because I owe her several months’ worth of salary.”

  “Nope. She cares about you. She’ll never admit it, but she does.” Ralph held my face in his hands and smeared more tears with his thumbs. Then he kissed me, right there in the pool of the streetlamp, with the big, dark, noisy city circling us all around.

  I gave myself a mental shake, and pulled away from him. “Wait a minute. You’re doing it again.”

  “Doing what?” His voice was hot. His arms fell to his sides.

  “Tricking me into smooching you. So you can check it off the list in your horrible little notebook.”

  His lips twitched.

  “It’s not funny,” I said.

  “I think you might’ve misread something.”

  “Your note said, clear as day, ‘L.W. kiss in cinema check.’”

  “Okay.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have written that, but—”

  “I knew it!” I had known it. But now he’d admitted it. My ribs ached, and not because of my girdle, either. I stomped down the sidewalk.

  He caught up with me at the steps of number 9. He took my shoulder and turned me around. “I’m not going to let you go like that.” His voice was rough, but his hands were steady as he dragged me close and kissed me again.

  I dissolved. I had amnesia. My only cogent thought involved wanting to unbutton Ralph’s shirt.

  He pulled away too soon. “Give me a thumbs-up out the window to let me know Mrs. Lundgren is back,” he said. “Don’t forget to lock your door tonight, and I’ll come by in the morning. We’ll figure out what to do with that film reel.”

  I looked at the canister.

  “I could take it,” Ralph said. “I’ve got a safe at my place, if that would make you feel better. If you trust me with it.”

  Good point. Why should I trust him with it? On the other hand, two people had been killed because of it, and I sure didn’t want to be next.

  “Okay,” I said. “I trust you. With the reel, anyway.” I pressed it into his hands and teetered up the steps. Would I ever see him, or that film reel, again? Who knew? I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t even walking straight.

  The scent of almond and butter unfurled from the apartment when I opened the door. A radio program clamored in the kitchen.

  Berta had returned.

  I closed the door, shucked off my shoes, dropped my handbag with the Brownie camera inside it on the floor, and yelled “I’m back!” I went to the window and gave Ralph a thumbs-up. He tipped his fedora, pushed his hands in his pockets, and strolled away.

  My gaze trailed after him until he melded with the shadows. A snippet of my heart abandoned me then. The snippet was going to follow Ralph all the way home. Wherever he lived.

  Whoever he was.

  Suspicion smacked me. Ralph knew an uncomfortable lot of details about my parents. When had I ever mentioned their double apartment? He hadn’t really come clean about that notebook entry, either. All he’d given me was a fever. And a missing snippet of heart.

  Mr. Ralph Oliver certainly knew his business.

  Damn him.

  29

  I padded to the kitchen. “Hi, Berta,” I said.

  “Not so loudly. Ed Wynn is on the wireless.”

  Golden cookies lay cooling on the table. Berta sat in her quilted robe by the open window, head propped in hand. A comic routine crackled through the radio. But Berta wasn’t laughing. She looked … dreamy.

  Uh-oh.

  Cedric lay on his side on the pouf. His tummy bulged.

  I chose a cookie. “I found the film reel.”

  Berta snapped the radio off. “In Miss Street’s Plaza suite?”

  “Yes. In her weekend bag.”

  “Quite in the nick of time. The landlord is due back in one more day. Did you tell Miss Simpkin you have found it?”

  “No.” I told Berta what we’d seen on the film, including the hint that the factory was over in Brooklyn, and how Ruby Simpkin had scarpered.

  Berta’s eyes blazed. “The little cheat! Unless, mind you, she has kicked the bucket. If that proves to be the case, then I shall only say that I believe it is possible for harlots to get past the pearly gates if they exhibit the proper amount of remorse.” She tipped her head. “The secret pork and beans recipe was demonstrated on the film, you say?”

  “Yes, but we couldn’t really make out what was going into the pot.”

  “Perhaps we ought to locate the Japanese butler Auntie Arbuckle mentioned. He must know something, do you not think? Remember, you told me that Auntie Arbuckle said he was fired over something to do with the pork and beans recipe, and that is precisely what the film is about. The recipe.”

  “What’s the point? Ruby’s gone. We’re still tapped out.”

  “Have you forgotten that you are on the lam? That Inspector Digton might have a warrant for your arrest? That there is a murderer at large who has attempted to crush you with a gargoyle?”

  Oh. That. I bit into my cookie.

  “We could telephone the domestic agencies in the morning,” Berta said. “Perhaps the butler has found a new position.”

  “I’m really worried something happened to Ruby. I mean, the other actress on the film has been murdered. I’ve got the willies. And what will we do about our finances?”

  “We’ll solve the murders, of course.”

  “What has that got to do with finances?”

  “If we solve the murders, the story will be in the newspapers.”

  “Believe me, Berta, having your name in the papers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “You do not understand. We shall become famous. These two murders, because they concern film stars, are being covered in newspapers all around the country, from here to San Francisco. Go see for yourself at the newsstand. If we succeed where the police fail, we will become famous lady detectives. Our names will be made. Our discreet retrieval agency will be launched.”

  It was far-fetched. Yet, there are times when you have to allow yourself to be swept up in somebody else’s conviction and let it carry you through.

  “Okay, Berta,” I said. “We’ll solve the murders. But I’m not sure what we’ll do when the landlord comes knocking.”

  “We shall stay with my dear friend Myrtle, uptown. She has only a bedsit, but her bed is quite roomy.”

  “Sounds wonderful.” I bit into a second cookie. In one short week, I’d gone from a four-poster in a mansion to the prospect of bunking with two aged ladies in a bedsit. Maybe we’d have three matching nightcaps.

  I went over to the icebox. I did a double take. Berta was wearing petal-pink lipstick. I hadn’t noticed it before. Lipstick! And now I realized that her hair wasn’t in its customary bun. It had been curled into a shoulder-length row of waves.

  “Did you go out?” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’ve got lipstick on.” I sniffed the air. Somewhere below the haze of almond and butter was another scent. Sharper, floral. “Are you wearing perfume?”

  “Cannot a lady do herself up a bit without having the screws put on her as though she were a Bolshevik prisoner? If you must know, I did not wish for the miniature bottle of Le Jade to go to waste.”

  “That was a business expense. You said so yourself.” I opened the icebox and dug out a bottle of milk. “Why so secretive? I wouldn’t begrudge you a beau or two. Or three.” I poured milk into a glass.

  Berta threw her hands up. “That is precisely why I did not tell you. Because—”

&n
bsp; “So there is a beau.” I gulped milk.

  “—because you would insinuate that my having an innocent meal with a gentleman was somehow on par with your wild flapper ways!”

  “Who’s the sheik?”

  “Never you mind.”

  “So there is a he.” I crunched down on a third cookie. “You know, Berta, you’ve never told me about your marriage. You were married once, right?”

  “Why, yes. I was. To a lovely gentleman. But he—” Her fingers crept to her locket. “—he perished. In Sweden. It was so long ago, really, and I was quite young.”

  “Oh. I am sorry.” I kicked myself for asking. But then, Berta could write a laundry list of all my foibles, yet I knew next to nothing about her. She was a walled fortress.

  “Shall we return to business?” Berta said. “While you and Mr. Oliver were locating the film reel, I gathered some interesting facts about Bruno Luciano.”

  “Still going on about him?”

  “Your head has been turned. Movie Love was correct. No woman can resist Mr. Luciano.”

  “No, I simply see no good reason to waste time investigating him. Why would he murder Horace Arbuckle? Or Vera Potter?”

  “Blackmail. Blackmail gone wrong.”

  “That’s a laugh—Bruno’s probably as rich as Midas. He’s a film star.”

  “Oh, but he has not been for long. You told me that, last weekend, Sadie Street made a cryptic remark about Philippe’s restaurant.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Miss Street mentioned Philippe’s because Bruno Luciano used to work there. As a taxi dancer.”

  “What? One of those fellows who’s paid to dance with the rich old biddies and whisper sweet nothings in their ears?”

  “One small step away from a gigolo.”

  “I didn’t know you knew those sorts of words, Berta.”

  “Simply because a lady does not say things aloud does not mean she is unaware.”

  True. “Go on—Bruno was a taxi dancer. When was this?”

  “He ended his dancing career about a year ago.”

  “Then he must’ve worked at Philippe’s right up until he started making motion pictures.”

  “Precisely. What is more, the story of Mr. Luciano’s background that one reads about in the movie magazines is, like Sadie Street’s, utterly fabricated.”

  “You mean his Italian contessa mother, and his horse polo hero father, and the orphanage, and—”

  “Goodness me. Did you believe that claptrap for a second?”

  I supposed I had.

  “I obtained a description of Mr. Luciano’s mother’s tobacco shop on Mulberry Street,” Berta said. “The shop has two painted wooden Indians standing in front. Mr. Luciano was reared above this shop. My source believes that Mrs. Luciano still runs it.”

  “Bruno is from Little Italy? Here in New York? Where did you say you got all this information?”

  “From a source.”

  “Not from Mr. Ant?”

  Berta laid a palm over her bosom. “I know many people, Mrs. Woodby. Long ago, before I worked for you, I was employed in a household in Annandale-on-Hudson, upstate. I became dear friends with the housekeeper there, and her cousin Paul’s wife’s brother’s uncle is employed at Philippe’s. As a doorman.”

  I couldn’t crack that puzzle. Not tonight. “Okay. I hope that’s not a fib. Because we’re business partners, right? So we’ve got to be square with each other.”

  “Of course.” Berta snapped the radio back on.

  I trudged off to bed.

  * * *

  The next morning, my gritty eyes were greeted by a plate of bacon, a pan of cinnamon buns, and a bubbling percolator of coffee. Oh yes, and blaring across the front page of the newspaper on the kitchen table,

  SECOND HIGH SOCIETY MURDER: Society Matron Lola Woodby questioned in murders of Tinned Foods Tycoon and Family Nurserymaid

  Below was a grainy photograph of me. Bundled in a towel, wet hair mortared to my skull, holding a highball. My mouth in a crooked O, two front teeth showing like a rabid woodchuck’s, squinty eyes.

  “Not the most flattering likeness,” Berta said, placing a cup of coffee before me.

  “That nasty Ida Shanks! This is her way of getting the last word after our little bargain yesterday.”

  “She will always get the last word, will she not? Miss Shanks’s words are printed in thousands of newspapers.”

  Didn’t I know it.

  “There are some interesting facts pertaining to Miss Potter in the second column,” Berta said. “I would avoid the column about yourself.”

  I had to chomp through three slices of bacon to work up enough nerve to look at the newspaper again.

  Naturally, I started with the column about myself.

  I was a “possible suspect” who had disappeared without a trace.

  “Without a trace?” I said. “Bruno saw me leaving Dune House with you and Ralph. So did Miss Shanks.”

  “Then she is a lady of honor,” Berta said.

  “Honor? Are we talking about the same Miss Shanks?”

  I returned to the newspaper. I was wanted for further questioning, according to Inspector Digton of Hare’s Hollow. There was also a choice quote from Dr. Chisholm Woodby: “The possible suspect is erratic, but not dangerous,” he’d told the reporter. “She has suffered great nervous strain as the result of her husband’s recent demise, and as a natural result of her barren condition. I have diagnosed her as a clinical hysteric, and any information regarding her whereabouts would be most appreciated.”

  “Hysteric?” I yelled. “Clinical hysteric?” I crumpled the entire newspaper into a large ball.

  Berta smoothed out the newspaper. “I told you not to read the article about yourself.” She tapped a fingertip on the paper. “Read this one. About Miss Potter.”

  What I really wanted to do was climb into a boxing ring with Chisholm and sock him in the jaw. I was sure I could take him down. I ate bacon. He ate turtle food.

  The gist of the second article was, Vera Potter had indeed been an actress. First in vaudeville—her parents were actors, too—and then as a bit-part player in the motion pictures. She wasn’t cut out for the job, though, and around October of last year, she had put together a bundle of phony references and managed to get a job as nurserymaid in the Arbuckle household.

  “I smell a rat,” I said.

  Berta nodded. “Thad Parker always says, one coincidence is one coincidence too many. It does not sit well, for me, at least, that Vera Potter starred in a film set in Horace Arbuckle’s factory, and then just so happened to find employment in Arbuckle’s house.”

  The doorbell buzzed.

  I headed to the foyer.

  “Ask the landlord to give us another week,” Berta called after me.

  When I opened the front door, I sighed in relief. It wasn’t the landlord; it was a boy in a courier’s uniform. He held a parcel wrapped in brown paper. “Mrs. Woodby?”

  “Yes?”

  “Delivery for you. From a secret admirer.” He thrust the parcel in my hands, tipped his cap, and skittered away down the stairs.

  I carried the parcel to the kitchen and placed it on the table. It was tied up with twine, but it had no labels or markings. I shook it. It rattled dully, as though there were rocks inside. I found scissors and cut the twine.

  Berta fluttered beside me.

  I tore off the brown paper, revealing a jumbo floral box with golden lettering and curlicues all over. It read, MCALLISTER’S ASSORTED CHOCOLATE CREAMS.

  “Mr. Oliver certainly knows the way to your heart,” Berta said.

  I stared down at the box. “Really? You think he … admires me?”

  “He appears to hold you in high regard. He was beside himself with worry when you went missing from the Foghorn.”

  “He was?” I couldn’t picture Ralph being beside himself about anything. I opened the box.

  The doorbell buzzed again.

  “I’ll get it,”
Berta said, and went to the door.

  I heard voices, and rapid footsteps.

  I rustled through the pink waxed paper and selected a nice, plump milk chocolate cream.

  Berta burst into the kitchen, Ralph behind her, just as I bit into the chocolate.

  “Stop!” Berta cried.

  “Spit it out,” Ralph said.

  I stared, but spit out the bite of chocolate into my palm.

  “Rinse your mouth with water,” Ralph said.

  “Mind telling me why?”

  “I didn’t send those.”

  “Oh.” I went over to the sink and rinsed my mouth under the tap. Then I threw the chocolate into the dustbin.

  “These have been tampered with.” Ralph was examining the bottom of one of the chocolates. “Look.”

  “I see a hole in the bottom. What of it?”

  Ralph inspected the entire top layer. Each and every chocolate had a puncture in it, and a couple of the holes had traces of white powder. “I’d put my money on arsenic,” he said.

  Berta squawked.

  “What?” I said. I sank into a chair.

  “Lola,” Ralph said, “come on—are you really surprised? Someone has already tried to kill you with a falling gargoyle.”

  “Maybe tried to kill me,” I said. But I knew how naïve I sounded.

  “And now,” Ralph said, “they’re giving it another try. What’s surprising to me is that you’d eat chocolates sent by a person unknown.”

  “The delivery boy said they were from a secret admirer.” I felt myself blush.

  Ralph grinned. “And you thought it was me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Aw.” He leaned over and chucked me lightly on the chin. “That’s kinda sweet.”

  “We must report this to the police,” Berta said.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Ralph said. “Lola is wanted by the police for murder, and this won’t convince them of anything. Heck, they might even say she poisoned the chocolates herself to create a distraction. But it’s up to Lola.”

  Berta and Ralph looked at me.

  “We’ll keep the chocolates as evidence—put them up high in a closet where Cedric can’t reach them,” I said. “And we’ll keep mum.”