by Maia Chance
Shipbuilding. So that’s how he’d gotten those muscles.
“Never finished school,” he said. “It’s tough for me to sit still. But I made that table you’re sitting at, and the chairs, too.”
I ran my fingertips over the pine boards of the table, almost seamlessly joined. He was a good carpenter.
Why did that make me want to slide my hands under his suspenders?
Ralph finished making the sandwiches. He plated them, and pushed one over to me. He sat down with his own sandwich. But he didn’t take a bite.
He leaned forward on his elbows. “Lola. I’ve got to get something off my chest.”
I lowered the sandwich from my open mouth. “Yes?”
He twisted his hands. The sight wrung my heart.
I knew what he wanted to say. I felt it, too.
I stood, and circled the kitchen table. I lowered myself onto his lap and wrapped an arm around his neck. “You needn’t say anything,” I whispered, my lips brushing his. I slid my fingers down his chest, under his suspender.
“Lola,” was all he said. He wrapped his arms roughly around me. I sank into him.
If our two previous kisses, in the Zenith Movie Palace and under the streetlamp on Longfellow Street, had been surprise parties, then this kiss was an all-out gala ball. Before I knew it, Ralph had a hot palm wedged under my garter, and my own hands had fumbled open his shirt buttons. His sandwich crashed to the floor. I was dimly aware of doggy-gobbling noises under the table, but I was too enfolded in the kiss to care about Cedric’s figure.
Ralph drew his mouth away from mine. “Wait,” he murmured. “I’ve really got to tell you.”
I frowned. I’d assumed what he meant to tell me was that he wanted to kiss me. That, maybe, he was starting to fall in love with me. “Go on, then.”
“It’s about, ah, work.”
My fire poofed out. I pushed his hand from my garter. “Oh?”
“About my investigation.”
“I already know quite well that you’ve been investigating me.”
“Okay. And who would you say hired me?”
“I haven’t the faintest notion. I’d thought Chisholm, but then, when he couldn’t find me … it’s not Chisholm, is it?”
Ralph sighed. “I need to tell you, Lola. I can’t—well, this just isn’t right. You being here, and us—well, you know.”
“Who is it?”
He swallowed. “Your mother.”
“What?” I jumped to my feet. “My mother hired you to spy on me? And you didn’t bally tell me? You’re an absolute—an absolute monster!”
“I feel bad about it.”
“You should’ve told me before!”
“I’ve got bills to pay, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid.”
“Trust me, I feel guilty about all this. You and Mrs. Lundgren have been real nice.”
“Nice?” I narrowed my eyes. “Nice? Is that what you call—call this?” I swept my hand between us. “Oh, sure, yes. How could I have been so stupid? You’re exactly like Alfie—you’re a ladies’ man. I, of all people, ought to be able to spot a—a Don Juan when I see one!” I made a humorless cackle. “I’ve seen the way the girls circle around you like—like buzzards.”
“Buzzards?” He scratched his eyebrow. “So I’m some kind of roadkill?”
“You said it. Only tell me this: Why did my mother hire you to snoop on me?”
“She wired me from Italy, shortly after she’d received word of Alfred’s death. Said she got my name from a client of mine, an American fellow who was staying at the same hotel in Rome, and she wanted to enlist my services. Asked me to just keep an eye on you.”
“But why?”
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“Did she think that I killed Alfie?”
“No, I don’t think so. Although I checked on that.”
“What?”
“The doctor’s report was clean as a whistle. Unless, of course, you figured out how to make his death look like a heart attack with digitalis or something, but I—”
“You’re suggesting that I murdered Alfie.”
“No. I’m not. I mean, I’m a professional. I look at every angle. But I ruled murder out early on. You just don’t have it in you.”
“Funny you should say that, because I feel like I could murder you.”
I dragged Cedric from his half-eaten pastrami sandwich. I marched out of the kitchen, through the apartment, and flung open the bedroom door. Berta was sitting in bed, reading in the glow of a lamp.
She gave me the up-and-down.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
“Leaving?”
“You can’t go back to that apartment,” Ralph said behind me. “It’s not safe. Come on. Stay here. We’ll talk it over again in the morning. You’ll feel better then.”
I pushed past him to the foyer and dug for my coat. “The hell I will, you two-faced, conniving—”
“Mrs. Woodby,” Berta fluted from the bedroom, “calm yourself.”
“I’m calm!” I whisked Cedric under my arm, grabbed my suitcase, and stormed out. “I’ll wait for you outside, Berta,” I said.
Berta joined me on the front steps a few minutes later. She carried her suitcase. The hem of her quilted robe poked out from beneath her raincoat.
“Did Mr. Oliver take liberties?” she asked.
“Worse. He’s been working for Mother.”
Berta tsked her tongue.
33
First thing the next morning, after eating breakfast and tidying the ransacked love nest, Berta and I prepared to go to Mrs. St. Aubin’s house. I had looked up her address in the 1920 copy of the New York Social Register I found in Alfie’s bookcase. Tracking down Dune House’s fired butler, Hisakawa, was our only good lead. There was Sadie Street’s incriminating lipstick. But without a motive or any other clues to tie Sadie to the murders, we were up against a brick wall on that one.
I buttoned on one of Berta’s dresses—brown flowers with a high lace collar. Even though I was wearing one of Eloise Wright’s rubber girdles, I filled out Berta’s dress a treat. Wonderful. I covered my hair with a floppy hat. I added scratchy wool stockings, the flat-heeled spectators, reading glasses, and one of Alfie’s cardigans. Queen of the Frumpy Fishwife Pageant.
Mrs. St. Aubin had never laid eyes on Berta before, so Berta didn’t need a disguise.
I walked Cedric, and left him on his pouf in the kitchen next to a bowl of fresh water and a Spratt’s Puppy Biscuit. As though he’d eat it. I was uneasy leaving Cedric alone after the apartment had been pillaged last night, but Cedric would blow my cover. Everyone in my social set knew Cedric.
* * *
The St. Aubin mansion was a splendid row house—white stone, bow windows, groomed shrubs, licorice-black railings—one block off Central Park. Berta and I stopped on the sidewalk.
“Are you certain Mrs. St. Aubin will not recognize you?” Berta asked.
“Fairly certain. I haven’t seen her since Lillian’s cotillion last winter, and that was only the briefest hello. Besides, look at me.”
“I think you look rather nice.”
We mounted the mansion’s steps and rang the doorbell.
After a minute or so, the door swept inward.
A short, plump man in butler’s livery and white gloves stood before us. He had smooth silver hair, black almond-shaped eyes, and a serene expression. “Good morning,” he said with a lilt of Japanese accent.
Hisakawa.
“Hello,” I said in an adenoidal voice. “We are from the Maiden Ladies’ Orphanage Fund, here to see Mrs. St. Aubin.”
“Does Madam expect you?”
“Not as such,” I said. “But we have been referred to Mrs. St. Aubin by Mrs. Virgil DuFey.”
“If Madam does not expect you, then you must write first,” Hisakawa said. “Good morning.” He began to close the door.
Just before the door hit home, Berta wedged her boot in the crack.
Berta grunted, but held her ground.
“Madam,” Hisakawa said, “if you do not remove your appendage from the premises, I must telephone the police.”
“Go right ahead, Mr. Hisakawa,” I said, scrapping the adenoidal voice.
He stiffened. “How do you know my name?”
Berta and I exchanged a glance. Berta’s face was burgundy—Hisakawa was still bearing down on her foot with the door.
“Oh, we know lots of things,” I said. “About Auntie Arbuckle.”
“Miss Clara?” Hisakawa said.
“Yes. And the secret pork and beans recipe.”
Hisakawa let up on the door.
Berta extracted her foot with a wince.
Hisakawa glanced over his shoulder into the marble foyer. He looked up and down the street. “You must come inside,” he whispered. “Through the kitchen entrance, in the back. Go around to the alley, and through the gate with climbing rosebushes. Five minutes.”
* * *
“Did you see the look on his face when I mentioned the secret recipe?” I whispered to Berta. We went around the corner in search of the alley.
“I did indeed. Thad Parker would be proud of your conning abilities.”
Walled gardens lined the alley, which was overlooked by the rear windows of row houses. We found an iron gate festooned with climbing rosebushes, and crept through into a courtyard with a mossy fountain, potted topiaries, and vine-draped walls. The kitchen door was down a short stair, concealed behind a tortured-looking espalier bush.
The kitchen door swung inward just as Berta lifted her hand to knock.
“Be quick,” Hisakawa whispered. “Cook has gone to take stock of the pantries, and the kitchen maid is out to market.”
Berta and I piled through the door, and Hisakawa shut it.
“What do you want?” he asked. “Who sent you? Fitzpatrick?”
“Do we really look like the sort Fitzpatrick would hire?” I said.
And what could Fitzpatrick, of all people, have to do with a pork and beans recipe?
“Then you know him.” Hisakawa took a step back. “Please. I do not—”
“Listen,” I said. “I need your help. I suppose you’ve read in the papers about the murder of your former employer, Horace Arbuckle?”
“Yes, of course,” Hisakawa said. “And Nanny Potter, too.”
“We’re trying to get to the bottom of all that. Now. Auntie Arbuckle mentioned something to me about a secret pork and beans recipe, and she also told me that you were fired over something to do with the recipe.”
Hisakawa stared at me. “You do not understand what ‘recipe’ means?”
“What it means?”
“When Miss Clara says pork and beans recipe, she means—” Hisakawa glanced over his shoulder, and then leaned in closer. “—she means bootleg.”
My tongue went dry. “Bootleg? You were fired over bootleg? Doing a spot of illegal trafficking, perhaps?”
“Of course not,” Hisakawa said. “I was fired unfairly, but not because I was a bootlegger. It is true, I did procure cases of Canadian whiskey for Miss Clara from time to time. She was good to me, and not so crazy as they say.”
“Where did you get the bootleg?” Berta asked.
“I have connections. But I did not take a profit. Procuring whiskey was a courtesy to Miss Clara, something any good and loyal servant would do.”
“Okay. And what about Arbuckle? What did he have to do with this?”
“Why should I tell you? I merely wish to carry out my duties in this household, and leave that unfortunate business in the past.”
“If you don’t speak up, Mr. Hisakawa,” I said, “innocent people might end up in the poke. Or worse.”
“Mr. Hisakawa,” Berta said, “I quite understand your dilemma. I have been a domestic servant myself for many, many years, and I know how servants are often unwittingly pulled into their masters’—and mistresses’—” She gave me a sidelong glance. “—absurd predicaments. Yet, this case is of the most pressing importance. We shall not tell a soul what you know about Arbuckle and the bootleg. Not a soul.”
Hisakawa was ashen. “Fitzpatrick has ways of making people tell. I have heard tales.”
“Please,” I said. “I’m begging you.”
He studied me. Pity glimmered. “Very well. I shall tell you, and then you will go.”
Berta and I bobbed our heads in agreement.
“One day about two weeks ago,” Hisakawa whispered, “I procured a new crate of Canadian whiskey for Miss Clara. Because she is a feeble, elderly lady, it was my custom to crowbar new cases open for her, in her private sitting room. No other servants could be trusted with such a task. Well, at that time, two weeks ago, I crowbarred the crate open, but instead of bottles of whiskey in the crate, there were cans. Cans of Auntie Arbuckle’s Pork and Beans, with Miss Clara’s own face staring back from the labels. I cautioned Miss Clara, but she was upset. She went to Mr. Arbuckle to demand an explanation. I was given notice later that day.”
I frowned. “But I don’t quite see what—”
“Oh, there you are, Hisakawa,” a lady’s voice warbled from the far end of the kitchen. “I forgot to tell Cook that I wish new potatoes for dinner tonight. Not whipped, since Mr. Van Goor cannot abide the cream that—Oh dear. Who’s this?” Daphne St. Aubin’s voice trailed off. She was a rangy dowager, draperied to the nines in maroon silk. “Who are these women, Hisakawa?”
“Madam,” Hisakawa said loudly, “I do not know who allowed these women into the house. They are selling subscriptions of some kind. I shall see them out.”
Mrs. St. Aubin peered at me hard. A little too hard.
Hisakawa herded Berta and me out of the kitchen. He slammed the door. The bolt thunked home.
* * *
“I think Mrs. St. Aubin recognized me,” I said to Berta as we swung through the garden gate into the alley.
“We have bigger fish to fry than that, Mrs. Woodby. For heaven’s sake. Why must your mind incessantly wander to the outskirts of the matter? I understand that you have had a lovers’ quarrel with Mr. Oliver, but you must focus!”
“All right,” I said, “then explain to me why Hisakawa had his trousers in a twist over seeing a crate of Auntie Arbuckle’s Pork and Beans.”
We hurried down the alley.
“I would have thought, Mrs. Woodby, that you would be a bit quicker on the uptake. Do you not see? If Hisakawa opened a crate that he expected to be Canadian whiskey, and found instead cans of Auntie Arbuckle’s Pork and Beans, then the crates were mixed up somewhere along the way.”
It sank in slowly. Then comprehension—and fear—flumed through me. “Arbuckle was smuggling bootleg.” I stopped in my tracks. “Hiding bottles of booze in crates labeled pork and beans.”
“Precisely.” Berta had stopped, too. She was breathing hard. “What is more, Hisakawa mentioned Mr. Fitzpatrick.”
“Do you suppose Arbuckle and Fitzpatrick were in business together?”
“That does seem to be the logical conclusion.”
“The crates must’ve been mixed up at a place where there were shipments of bootleg and shipments of pork and beans,” I said. “But where? If only Mr. Hisakawa had told us where he procured those crates of whiskey.”
“One possibility of the location springs to mind.”
“Oh. Right.” Neither of us needed to say it aloud: the factory in the film. I said, “I’d bet you anything that Ruby and Vera Potter, when they were filming that reel at the factory, saw something that made them realize it was a bootleg operation. I’d bet it was either Ruby or Vera who was blackmailing Arbuckle.”
“We must go to that factory,” Berta said. “With the camera. We shall photograph evidence of the illicit operation and turn over the pictures to the newspapers.”
“No! Are you off your rocker? We’ve got to notify the police. This is a federal crime we’re talking about. And two murders, and
gangsters, and—”
“Would you rather hand all of the hard-won fruits of our sleuthing to the police and let them solve the crimes?” Berta said. “After which you, with nothing to show for yourself, can go to live with your mother and father and go about after Miss Lillian, picking up her soiled handkerchiefs and Chisholm’s health bread crumbs? Or would you prefer to join me in cracking this case ourselves, taking it to the newspapers, and receiving enough fame and adulation to open a proper detective agency and live as financially independent ladies?”
I stared at Berta. “Okay,” I finally said. “Okay. The only wrinkle is, how the heck will we find the factory?”
“It appeared to be in Brooklyn, you said, near the river. So, we shall hire a taxi, and motor past every riverside factory in Brooklyn until we find it.”
34
We Pony Expressed it back to Washington Square, and stopped by a newsstand to purchase a city map. My old map was in the Duesy, and the Duesy was in the clink.
Back at the love nest, I had gathered up the Brownie and checked its spool of film before I thought of Cedric. I looked around the sitting room. No Cedric. I whistled down the hallway.
No scamper of tiny paws. I went to the kitchen.
Cedric’s pouf was empty.
I dashed to Alfie’s bedroom. Berta was fixing her bun. “Is Cedric in here?” I asked.
“Why, no. I thought he was in the kitchen.”
“He’s not.” My insides wrenched. I checked the bathroom and the foyer, and then went and looked in the kitchen again.
Only then did I see the note.
It looked straight out of a Thad Parker novel: mismatched letters snipped from newspapers and glued crookedly to a sheet of typing paper, at once carnivalesque and sinister:
tHis IS yOUr laSt ChaNce: StoP MEDdlinG oR You’Re A GoNEr 2
I tasted bile. My hands shook. I read and reread the note, but it wasn’t soaking in.
Then Berta was at my side, reading over my shoulder. She clutched her locket. “Poor little mite.”
Eleven years ago, when the RMS Titanic slid to her icy grave, only three shipboard dogs survived. Two were Pomeranians. Perhaps this fact only suggests that first-class dogs, like first-class passengers, have better survival odds when lifeboats are in short supply. But I liked to think that those two Pomeranians on the Titanic survived because of the breed’s particular verve.