Cold Morning

by Ed Ifkovic

  A pause. “You know the answer to that.”

  “I thought so.”

  “But the attention of women for a man like me is a rarity—a solar eclipse, if you will—that must be cultivated.”

  I nudged him again, harder this time. “Then go cultivate.”

  He stood but looked down at me. “I imagine men never find you alluring, dear Ferb.”

  “They’d better not if they know what’s good for them.”

  “You scare men away.” He chuckled. “But you don’t scare me, my dear.” He pointed a finger at me.

  “I repeat—only men, Aleck. Only men.”

  ***

  Early the next morning I took my usual walk, the streets still dead, though the bitter cold cut short my stride, yet I paused in the back parking lot, empty now, recalling that spitfire spat of Annabel and Cody Lee. The wind whistled along the eaves of the hotel, drifted through the crevices of the metal storage shed, and I lingered, listening to the ghosts that swirled and eddied there. Chilled, numb, I returned to my room, showered, dressed for the day, and scurried into the café. Aleck was already there, a cup of coffee before him as he chatted with a waiter.

  “You’re late.” He spotted me and motioned to a seat.

  I mouthed the word “coffee” to the waiter as he rushed away.

  “Tell me.” I looked into Aleck’s face.

  “My, my, not even a good-morning buss on the cheek.” He inserted a cigarette into his holder and purposely took his time lighting it.

  “Tell me.”

  “A knock on her door and again the disappointment in her face—for a moment, at least. Her expected suitor, I gather, the one she’d perfumed and powdered herself for, never showed. But she was overjoyed to find me rapping on her door.”

  “The letter, Aleck.”

  Aleck peered over his eyeglasses, which teetered on the edge of his nose. He contemplated a cinnamon roll on a plate before him, one fingertip touching the sweet frosting. He licked it with approval. “I may have to order another.”

  Bitingly, I said, “I’ll order you a…gross, Aleck. Tell me.”

  “A couple glasses of wine late in the evening at a hideous log-cabin tavern called, forgive me, Edna, the Dew Drop Inn. The hoi polloi refuses to avoid egregious puns. Can you tell me why?”

  “Can you tell me why you’re blathering about nonsense?” I smiled. “What don’t you want to tell me?”

  “As Peggy and I nestled into a food-stained booth, torn with springs disturbing my derriere…”

  “Please, Aleck.”

  “She went on and on about hearing me on the radio. The Town Crier. My comforting tones, she called them.”

  “Aleck!”

  “Anyway, she did locate that letter, right after we left—after, that is, Joshua Flagg interrupted and she showed both of us out. She wasn’t happy about the letter.”

  “Did you read it?”

  He shook his head. “She refused to show it to me, though she did reveal some of the contents. She found it, remarkably enough, hidden behind a loose floor panel in that hideous room. Behind Annabel’s bed.”

  “Of course, she already knew it existed.”

  “Yes, Annabel had hinted at some of the scandalous contents. And its contents alarmed her. Thank God for the Dew Drop Inn.”

  “Tell me,” I insisted.

  Aleck’s fingers wrestled with the cinnamon roll, although he still gripped his cigarette holder. “Let me first say that poor Peggy now is frightened. Somehow the murder of Annabel and our visit and the talk of the letters from Violet Sharp—and, to be truthful, the mention of Charles Lindbergh and the kidnapping—all became a jumble in the same mathematical equation—well, she’s added all these elements together in the test tube of her mind, and she’s…afraid.”

  “But of what?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Of Cody Lee Thomas.”

  That stunned me—unexpected. “But he’s in jail.”

  “No matter. She’d got this idea that he’ll break out of jail.”

  “And what? Kill her?”

  “I know, I know. It makes no sense. But she says he’s a brute.”

  “He’s a gentle man.”

  Aleck peered over his eyeglasses. “Really, Edna. You do sentimentalize the most loathsome of the male species.”

  I ignored that. “There has to be something else.”

  “Well, yes. Cody Lee is safely out of the way. To me, he’s not part of the nonsense Annabel believed, by way of Violet’s own fantastic imagination. But she thinks someone else is involved with the kidnapping, maybe a friend of his—and possibly around.”

  “Preposterous.” A waiter glanced out the small kitchen window, then disappeared. I leaned in, confidential. “Just what did Violet Sharp say in that final letter?”

  He sucked in his breath. “Explosive, my dear, but dear Peggy is hesitant to tell all.”

  We locked eyes. “But she told you enough.”

  “I am a charming man.”

  “And the generous purveyor of a bottle of wine in the…Dew Drop Inn.”

  “Please, those words sound bleak coming from your novelistic mouth.”

  “Tell me.”

  The manager, Horace Tripp, walked briskly out of the kitchen and stood, arms folded, watching us. He didn’t look happy. Nearby tables began to fill, but he paid them no mind. Rather, his glare suggested he was solely focused on Aleck and me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his head flick toward us, curious, though when I looked in his direction, he twisted his head away so quickly it was almost comical. The vaudeville comedian with exaggerated stage business. He picked a piece of lint off his morning coat.

  Aleck, pausing in his story, noticed him. He leaned in, nodded at me, and said loudly, “The manager cannot take his eyes off us.”

  But I was impatient. “Finish, Aleck. What did Violet write to Annabel?”

  Aleck scratched his head, deliberated. “I’m piecing together the words, some of which were delivered from a drunken if provocative mouth. Her delivery was like scattershot from a faulty shotgun. But do you remember how she told us that someone in the Morrow household was the key to her fortune?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He spaced out his words slowly. “The reason Annabel believed her fortune now lay in Flemington had to do with Colonel Lindbergh’s schizophrenic brother-in-law, Dwight Morrow, Jr.”

  “What?”

  “I know, I know,” he went on in a hurry. “But that could be stuff and nonsense. I gather the friend Violet often talked about, this Blake Somerville, the wealthy cad, was someone Violet thought she loved. According to Peggy, Violet—leastwise Annabel’s rendition of her scattered cousin via the letters—was a pretty girl, but flighty, given to infatuations and romances and…and sexual flings that she feared Mrs. Morrow would discover. A girl who, as they say, liked a good time at parties.”

  “But what does this have to do with the kidnapping?”

  “Let me get there. Violet mentioned Dwight Morrow’s intense dislike of his brother-in-law, Charles Lindbergh. The young man—the only son in the family—adored his older sister Anne, resented the famed aviator squiring her away into an international world of flight and fancy. Not only that, but Lindbergh used to make fun of him. Dwight suffered emotional breakdowns, hallucinations, and such, and he even refused to attend the lavish wedding of the two.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “But you’re not saying he was involved with the kidnapping of the baby, are you?”

  “I’m only telling you what Peggy gathered from talks with Annabel. Violet liked roadhouses, especially in those dry days of bootleggers and rumrunners, and she craved the attention of men, especially the dipsomaniac butler named Septimus Banks. They were butlers and townsmen and livery grooms, plebians, the help, but Blake Somerville swep
t her off her feet, a slick operator, charming, moneyed, amoral.”

  “And?”

  “According to Peggy, in the long last letter, Violet insisted Blake played into Dwight’s dislike of Lindbergh, played up the young man’s resentment of his family. He felt he’d been duped out of fifty grand in his dead father’s will, that his severe mother was cruel to him. To his face she once called him ‘the family tragedy.’ Violet was amused by Blake’s suave manipulation, his power over people. Blake wanted to help Dwight get back at his family.”

  “You’re not saying he orchestrated the kidnapping of the baby? Preposterous.”

  “That’s where Peggy begged off, dear Ferb. She suddenly got scared talking to me—I guess I should have ordered another bottle of cheap wine at the Dew Droop Out, or whatever it’s called. Her last words before she became a clam—she mumbled about a stupid prank gone wrong.”

  “A prank? Preposterous.”

  “I guess Violet described Lindbergh as an ah-shucks country boy at heart, a simple man who liked to play stupid pranks, especially on his family. One such prank supposedly was to hide the baby in a closet for a short time from his wife and the nurse, Betty Gow.”

  “Preposterous.”

  “You have to stop saying that, Edna. At least not so loudly. You’re like a parrot in real pearls.”

  “This is a fantastic story.”

  “Keep in mind Violet liked to make up stories, according to Annabel. A liar.”

  “Still and all…”

  “You’ve read the biography, Edna. Lindy is a hero but a country boy at heart. A simple jokester.”

  I frowned. “I know the stories—how he thought it funny to splatter mud on folks watching him taxi his plane. Substituting gasoline into the water jug of a pilot so that the man had to be hospitalized.”

  “Boyish stunts.”

  “Done by a man, Aleck. I’ve read that Betty Gow, discovering the cradle empty, pleaded with Lindbergh, ‘Do you have the baby? Please don’t fool me.’ My emphasis here, Aleck. She thought he was playing a game—again.”

  Aleck wasn’t happy with me. “That meant nothing.” He made his round eyes into slits. “Violet Sharp was a storyteller.”

  “There’s more, right?”

  I looked around me. The room was filling up, and Horace Tripp was rocking on his heels, his steely eyes on us.

  Aleck sat back in his chair, blew a smoke ring into the air. “Violet wrote in that letter that Dwight Morrow hated the baby, but Blake…well, Blake didn’t love anything but idle game-playing. Blake Somerville was a few years ahead of Dwight at Amherst College, dropped out, drifted back in, but the real contact happened when both were confined to Montclair Manor for treatment.”

  “What is Montclair Manor?”

  “I gather it’s a loony bin for rich folks.”

  “So Dwight and Blake…”

  “Rediscovered each other, old neighbors, and Blake wooed the impressionable Violet and…”

  “And Annabel came to believe they were instrumental in snatching the baby?”

  Aleck didn’t answer for a minute. Then, slowly, “This is a stretch, Edna. If you ask me, it’s a lot of hooey. Violet was a troublemaker, an hysteric, and a fable-maker. Peggy wouldn’t go on except to say that Violet was rattled after the baby disappeared that night, made a frantic visit to her sister, Emily, across town, who in short order boarded a boat back to England. I gather Emily was also a guest at roadhouses with this Blake, a man who obviously liked to entertain the help, if you know what I mean. Then Violet, questioned three or four times by the state police, killed herself.”

  “My God.” I breathed in. “But there is no proof.”

  “None whatsoever. Just Violet’s rambling in that last letter, now tucked away in a different place by Peggy.”

  “She has to give it to the police.”

  Aleck laughed. “I don’t think she’ll be doing that.”

  “But if the letters were stolen, except that one, the odds are Cody Lee Thomas is innocent. What would he care about all that business at the Morrow mansion? But it means someone else knew about those letters.”

  “Don’t make too much of this,” Aleck said.

  I spoke over his words. “This Blake Somerville intrigues me. He sounds very Machiavellian, some slick Jersey Iago twisting the disturbed Dwight Morrow for some sick pleasure.”

  “But Edna, this sounds to me to be Violet’s warped fancy. A series of exaggerations in letters to Annabel in Chicago.”

  “And yet Annabel believed it—she left the Palmer House and came to Flemington, hoping to cash in, to blackmail Colonel Lindbergh to save the reputation of…”

  “Of his wife’s distinguished family?”

  “It all seems unrealistic.”

  “Look around you, my dear. It’s one more piece of the convoluted jigsaw puzzle—this circus of a trial, the madness in the streets, this danse macabre of insane reporters looking for any tidbit to scoop the others—this is a Hogarth etching being written in Jersey.”

  “We need to do something.”

  Aleck held up his hand. “Oh, I don’t think so. Who would believe such a—I’ll use your word here—preposterous story? Cody Lee threatened Annabel with death, and he’s behind bars. A lover’s quarrel turned deadly. Annabel is dead. Violet Sharp is dead. Dwight Morrow and Blake Somerville are rich, privileged young men, insulated from the real world. Should we accuse…imagine the outcry.”

  “But the letters?”

  “One letter, Edna. The others gone. And that one insane—and probably fictitious—letter is in Peggy’s hands, tight-fisted. She told me she plans to burn it.”

  “What? She can’t.”

  “Who is to stop her?”

  “Evidence.”

  “Of what?”

  I stammered. “Of…of…” Wildly, I ran through the words: murder, kidnapping, mayhem, chaos, farce.

  “Maybe they talked about a stupid prank, Edna. Just idle talk. Like: ‘Hey, let’s think of a way to rile that aviator hero.’”

  “That went wrong.”

  “If they actually did anything, which I don’t believe for one second. You’re not thinking sensibly, Ferb. It was not a plot hatched in the Morrow mansion. Don’t get carried away, my dear. This isn’t some Grimms’ fairy tale, the wicked brother-in-law. It was really Bruno Richard Hauptmann. I mean, think of the amount of evidence collected against the German monster. A man who hid the ransom money in a makeshift garage, who spent it willy-nilly in a time of great Depression, a man who was identified by witnesses, including Jafsie, Dr. Condon, the go-between. Eyewitnesses, Edna. Bruno the carpenter and his makeshift ladder. A man who…a man who is on trial for murder.”

  I held up my hand. “Enough. I know the drill. It’s restated in every editorial. But no…not enough. There’s a tale here that needs unraveling, Aleck. The letters tell the story. Cody Lee has nothing to do with this.”

  He glowered at me. “There is no story, Edna. Just the fanciful nonsense of a troubled girl.” He watched my face closely. “And what do you propose to do?”

  I spoke over his words. “Tell me about this Montclair Manor?”

  “I know nothing about it. A mental hospital in the hills of Jersey, across from the Hudson.”

  “For rich folks.”

  “Poor folks who are bonkers have only the walls of their bedrooms.”

  A rustling as Walter Winchell strolled in, an entourage of cub reporters and sycophants surrounding him. He paused for a second to glance down at us, and Aleck nodded at him. He was going on about something—I heard him thunder, “You can detect criminality in the eye corner” or some blather like that—and he slid into a chair, waiters hovering, coffee poured, homage paid.

  “We need to leave,” I told Aleck. “The floor show is going to begin.”

  Aleck bubbled o
ver. “Why do you dislike that man so?”

  “He’s a horrid little gossip monger, venal and spiteful.”

  “That’s what I like about you, Ferb dear. No room for moderation. Everything black or white.”

  “That’s because people are good or bad. One or the other.”

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  “Sometimes I think I do.”

  As we readied to leave, the manager suddenly stood near me, clearing his throat.

  “Yes, Mr. Tripp?” I asked.

  “Yes, call me Horace, please.”

  “Yes, Mr. Tripp?”

  He lowered his voice. “I cannot help wondering,” he stuttered, struggled with his breath. “I…yesterday, I…I saw the two of you walking out of Peggy Crispen’s room at the boardinghouse.”

  I looked around. “Is she working today?”

  That flustered him. “She sent word to say she has a headache. She won’t be in.”

  “A pity,” said Aleck. “An attractive woman, sensible.”

  Horace could make little sense of that, a puzzled expression on his face. He looked over his shoulder. “Well, you two were in her room, yes?”

  “Annabel’s former room,” Aleck interrupted.

  “Yes, well, I was wondering about it. It’s none of my business, of course, but she does work here and I am responsible for…” His voice took on a hushed, raspy tone. “Is there a problem?”

  “Why were you at the boardinghouse?”

  “I…”

  The kitchen door swung open and his wife, Martha, appeared, rushing up, her hand tucked under his elbow. “Horace, one of the cooks needs you.”

  Flushed, stumbling, he tottered back and bumped into a chair. But I was watching his wife’s face: cold, cold, the lines around her mouth crimped, rigid. And her eyes flashed a horrible look that was both angry and hurt.

  I watched Horace’s retreating back. Of course, he’d been the visitor Peggy Crispen had been expecting in her room, the reason she was so dolled up, the reason she was surprised when the pesky reporter Joshua Flagg rapped on the door. She had been expecting her lover, the philanderer Mr. Tripp. And I now wondered if the two-bit kitchen Romeo had also wooed Annabel Biggs.