A Toast Before Dying

by Grace F. Edwards

  “Or go back earlier and listen to Billie Holiday sing ‘Them There Eyes’ or ‘My Man.’ That girl made you see what she saw, which was usually some pretty man whose mission was to dog you from day one. But you were able to see him and feel her pain, and that was her genius.

  “Thea could’ve eventually done that, but for some reason …” Miss Adele sighed and the smile went away. “I can tell you why she lost that pageant, Mali. When she sang the crucial number, she was supposed to sing from her center—as most singers do. But Dessie, the only person in the world who had meant anything to her, was dying. And Thea’s center drained like a whirlpool even as she fought to keep it intact.

  “Then, a few years later when she found those letters, I imagine she really hollowed herself out. Emptied herself of everything. I mean what little that might have remained, she froze it, so to speak, then dug it out the way a dentist would handle a bad tooth. Then she filled that place with something that finally did her in.”

  “What was that?”

  “Rage. Despair. Hopelessness. The knowledge that her mother had never wanted her and she had no idea who her father was. I don’t think Dessie ever found out who Thea’s father was. Marcella never said anything, only stayed one day and didn’t even wave when she left. I know. And Thea must’ve found all that in those letters.

  “She tried to sing after that, had several gigs here and there, but eventually she seemed to shut down, as if the world and everything in it was just too much.”

  “Is that why she went to work at the Half-Moon when she knew she could’ve done so much better? I mean, she had a modeling career, had married a successful architect. Why’d she throw that away?”

  Miss Adele raised her shoulders gently, as if to shift a weight that had rested there too long.

  “I don’t really know. Perhaps she’d felt betrayed, violated. She’d lost a sense of who she was, and probably felt she didn’t deserve anything that good. Who knows? Then again, she may have gone to the Half-Moon out of spite. By the time she started working there, the place was nothing like it used to be. It had gone through so many changes it gave me a headache just to pass by on the same side of the street.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “it was her way of letting the world—especially her mother—know that she didn’t care about anything. Nothing mattered.”

  Miss Adele nodded wearily. “For somebody who didn’t care, she was a very busy girl.”

  I smiled, thinking of Edwin and all the other men in her life who had hoped to be the one to change her, to break through, like in Pygmalion. Instead, she had changed them. Or shortchanged them.

  “Do you know of a woman named Teddi Lovette?” I asked, changing the subject again.

  Miss Adele thought a minute, then shook her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Who is she?”

  “A white actress who has a small repertory company called Star Manhattan on Theater Row. She had asked me to find out as much as I could about Thea.”

  “Why?”

  “She never gave me a clear answer. Except that she’s in love with Kendrick and is kicking out big bucks for his legal fees.”

  “That’s interesting. Seems to me she’d be concentrating on springing the living, not raising the dead. I mean, despite her money, Kendrick’s still behind bars and—”

  “She had offered me twenty thousand to dig up Thea … a hell of a lot of money. At first I thought it was because she was obsessed with the fact that Kendrick had been in love with Thea and she wanted to find out as much as possible about her. You know, find out the formula … But no damn formula is worth that much, even if Kendrick’s a sixty-minute man. Then she changed her mind and told me to forget all about it.”

  Miss Adele put her glass down. “There must be something she isn’t telling you, Mali. Listen: Give me her name again. Friend of mine was an assistant set designer when I was working. He’s retired now but does some volunteer stuff in the small productions, especially along Theater Row, to keep his hand in. Something of a gossip, and he’ll let me know what’s going on in a beat.”

  I had no clear memory of arriving home. Just a wavery image of a cab waiting in front of Miss Adele’s to pick me up, then a kaleidoscopic vision of trees, cars, horns, people, and Technicolor traffic lights. The sky was a painfully bright blue that wouldn’t stop spinning whenever I looked up.

  I did not remember how unsteady my hand was when I pushed a bill toward the driver, and I did not remember counting the change. Then came the careful and calculated tightwire stroll from the curb to the stoop and the relief that Dad had been waiting to open the door before the pavement, shimmering like waves, came up to meet my face.

  He shepherded me inside and I heard succinct remarks but couldn’t process them. Then more steps that he helped me negotiate and finally a cold cloth across my forehead. Before I drifted off, I saw golden star-bursts explode like a Fourth of July gala, except all that terrific sound was entirely inside, ripping through my gray matter. The room was spinning and I thought, Miss Adele, Miss Adele. Living well is hell.

  chapter twenty-six

  There was a cup of coffee on the night table and it was dark outside when I turned over. The phone was ringing and I lay with eyes closed, preferring to let the machine click on. The message was faint—Dad must’ve turned the volume down low—and I didn’t care so long as it didn’t deepen the rhythm of the hammer in my head. I raised up on one elbow and leaned over to taste the coffee. It was ice-cold and I wondered vaguely how many hours had passed. The phone rang again and I ignored that call also. Then I fell back to sleep and somewhere between dreams I thought I heard it ring once more.

  “You must have had quite a time at Adele’s,” Dad said as he pulled up the blinds. I blinked awake to the sun spilling yellow and white across my bed.

  “What time is it?”

  “You mean what day is it, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer and he closed the door, leaving me alone again. Actually I felt fine, having slept through the worst of the hangover. I showered quickly and wandered downstairs.

  “Sorry, Dad. I hope I didn’t embarrass you too much.”

  He looked up from the Daily Challenge and nodded. “Nope. You didn’t embarrass me.”

  Which meant that I must have embarrassed myself. “It was champagne. Too much, too quick, too rich. Never again.”

  He didn’t look up but riffled the papers in a way that let me know the subject was closed. I saw the tight expression and made up my own mind that popping corks was not for me.

  Upstairs again, I turned on the answering machine and listened to two messages from Miss Adele asking me to call as soon as possible, and one from Teddi Lovette apologizing for her disappearing act the other day and promising to call later.

  The phone rang again even as the last message played out.

  “Mali,” Miss Adele said without asking how I had survived her champagne breakfast. “I called my friend yesterday and he didn’t even have to ask around. Your actress friend’s maiden name is Teddi Eden. She’s the daughter of Marissa and Sam Eden. Marissa Eden’s maiden name is Hamil.”

  There was a pause and I waited. When Miss Adele didn’t speak, I said, “Yes. Go on.”

  She laughed then. “You don’t see?”

  “See what?”

  “The connection. The article I showed you yesterday.”

  “Oh. Oh,” I said, even though I hadn’t been able to make head or tails of the piece of paper. “Are you sure? I mean, is your friend sure?”

  “Sure, he’s sure. He knew Teddi’s husband. Older man named William Lovette who died on the honeymoon. Left her megabucks and an estate in Westchester.”

  “Yes. Yes. But let’s get back to Marissa Hamil. Or Eden. Or whatever her name is.”

  “Well, she was Marcella Hamilton before she was anything else,” Miss Adele said. “Names may change but pictures don’t lie.”

  I hung up and got out my file to jot down the latest developments. As I read it over, I did
n’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Later, I dialed Teddi’s number, even though she’d told me not to. She was somewhere in Westchester, probably Bedford or Armonk, and I wondered about the size of her mansion. Her machine clicked and her voice sounded nervous even on the tape.

  “Teddi, I have the information you wanted,” I said and hung up without leaving my name. She’d know who I was.

  It was 10 P.M. and I was wide-awake so I collared Ruffin. “Come on. Let’s see what’s happening at Better Crust Pie Shop. I need a sweet-potato custard.”

  We walked up 139th Street to Seventh Avenue and peered through the window, but although there were sounds of the night baker in the rear, the shop was closed.

  Across the avenue, the bright lights of Mickey Dee’s spread like a beacon, pulling in cars and pedestrians alike, but that wasn’t what I wanted. We strolled one block north to stand near the Half-Moon, where I cupped my hand against a dusty window and peered inside. The bottles and votive candles were long gone. The spindly legs of the bar stools upturned on the counter resembled the hair-like limbs of spiders lying on their backs, stiffened by time and death. I saw the quick and careful movement of rats the size of puppies making their way along the counter, gnawing probably at the glue that held the stools together.

  I thought of Thea lying in the alley a few feet away with half her face gone. I closed my eyes and imagined the slow tap of Dessie’s five-inch heels heading toward Lenox Avenue and the haven of Harlem Hospital.

  I wondered if it had been a winter night and if she had held her coat close against the cold. Or if it had been summertime and people lounging on stoops to escape the heat of crowded apartments had waved as she passed. I wondered if the emergency room had been very crowded.

  I turned away and looked up at the lamppost, where a remnant of a GRAND OPENING pennant, faded and torn, hung limply from thin wire. It was all that remained of the Half-Moon.

  I walked to Eighth Avenue and headed home. There were two messages when I returned. One was from Tad, his deep quiet voice phrasing some extraordinary ideas about my lovemaking and how hard it was for anyone to improve on a good thing. Then he calmed down enough to tell me about Roger Morris. Tad had interviewed Morris, who could offer nothing other than that he’d paid one thousand a month into Thea’s bank account for her support. It turned out that he hadn’t wanted a divorce after all, but hoped Thea’d change her mind and return to him when she was “ready to settle down,” as he put it. Meanwhile, he had hoped and paid.

  The other message was from Teddi, wanting to see me at the theater tomorrow.

  I took another shower and went to bed. Sometime in the night, the phone rang, and when I answered there was silence. I pressed the call-back key but it didn’t connect. I hung up and called Elizabeth Jackson, who woke up grumbling.

  “Mali, I’m not going to tell you what I think of your calling me at this hour. It had better be important.”

  “I’m going to see Teddi tomorrow at the theater. She called while I was out. I need an update on Kendrick.”

  “Kendrick’s okay. Teddi Big-Bucks hired another lawyer to work with me. He’s a gun with heavy connections, so her boy might be seeing the light of day any day now.”

  “Good. I have some info on Thea that’ll surprise her. I’ll talk to you tomorrow afternoon. I’m meeting her at twelve.”

  I still couldn’t sleep and spent the next hours reading the file again and trying to keep the names and dates straight. Finally I settled against the pillows, intending to think about everything. It was dawn when I opened my eyes with a bad ache in my neck and the notes scattered on the floor near the bed.

  I reached for the phone and dialed Miss Adele. She came on sounding unbelievably cheerful, then got serious. “You want the clipping? What do you intend to do with it?”

  “Give Teddi the information she asked for.”

  I hung up and showered and dressed and went uptown.

  When Miss Adele opened the door, the concern showed in her face. “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

  “I won’t know until I do it, Miss Adele. There’s a connection here and the longer we do nothing, the longer Kendrick looks at hard time.”

  She went to the cabinet, pulled out the rosewood case, and handed me the clipping. “You want me to call anyone? I don’t like you stepping into something with no one to watch your back.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m not planning to confront anyone, just to tell Teddi what she needs to know.”

  Her frown grew deeper, so I said, “Okay, here are some numbers if you don’t hear from me in two hours.”

  I gave her Bertha’s number, Elizabeth’s number, and the address of the theater.

  “You have Dad’s number, but don’t call unless you really have to. He worries too much.”

  She jotted them down and looked at me. “Anyone else?”

  I thought of Tad, but since I wasn’t going to war I saw no need to call out the cavalry.

  “I think that’s sufficient.” I pressed her hand and headed for the elevator.

  “Two hours,” she reminded me.

  chapter twenty-seven

  Star Manhattan’s door was unlocked and I pushed it gently and again listened to my footfalls grow quiet and disappear as I approached the stage. Three sliding wall panels, over six feet high and painted black, were on each side with enough room to walk between each, like a narrow maze.

  I quietly walked around the panels to the back. In the dressing area, the glow of a small glass-shaded lamp lit a table overflowing with the actor’s usual accessories. Buried in the clutter, a small transistor with fading batteries sent out a thin crackly tune.

  “Teddi?”

  The name sounded cool in the silence.

  “Teddi?” I called again to test the sound and also to figure who might have disappeared when they heard me step across the stage. The lamp and the radio were on. Someone had to be here. I looked around at the area, which seemed more disorganized than on my previous visit. The cables were still coiled like glutted pythons, and the trunk, empty of its contents, lay open with its lid held up by a length of iron piping. I wondered where all the stuff had gone.

  I turned off the radio to allow the battery to die a decent death, then placed the chair so that my back was to the wall and sat down to wait. The silence seemed different now, and I knew I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t in the mood for cat and mouse, so I left the chair, approached the stage, and slipped into the maze of panels, following a faint skittering sound.

  When I moved between the second and third panels, facing me at the other end was Teddi’s mother, Marcella Hamilton Hamil Eden. At least I thought it was her. She came nearer, moving soundlessly on the balls of her feet, and decked out in a surprising outfit: black hooded cotton jacket, jogging pants, and black tennis shoes.

  All you need, I thought, is blackface and you’d …

  “Well, we meet again,” she said. Her voice was low and her smile showed a lot more teeth than last time. The smile was by no means friendly, and I expected to hear the whine of sinister organ music break out as she approached. I did not back away because pound for pound I knew I had the advantage and could take her down without breaking a sweat. But when her hand came up out of the dark, the equation shifted: I saw the gun.

  “Now,” she whispered, “let’s step back where we can sit and talk.”

  “Talk about what?” I asked. I moved back to the chair and sat down again. “I came to see Teddi. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is your nosiness. Why did you come here in the first place? You weren’t interested in any audition.”

  I considered several answers but looked at the gun again and chose the one least likely to tick her off. “Teddi called me,” I said, “and here I am.”

  She had been standing in front of me but now eased away to sit down on a large packing crate. The gun hand never wavered.

  “You’re making me nervous with that weapon,” I said. “Why d
on’t you rest it?”

  “I will. In my own good time. But first, let’s talk.”

  “Fine. Where’s Teddi?”

  “On her way upstate to an old farmhouse where she’ll be for the next week or so, working on a script. With a little luck, she should be halfway across the Tap-pen Zee Bridge as we speak. I left that message for you.”

  I said nothing. The voices had sounded so much alike on the machine. Now I wondered how long I could engage her in conversation, stall her until Miss Adele got worried. Now I was sorry I had asked her not to call Dad, but the others. What could Bert do but get more nervous? What could Elizabeth do?

  “My daughter should be more careful,” Marcella said. “It took some time but I managed to examine her phone bills. There were no Brooklyn numbers. Several upstate, a few Long Island, but mostly Manhattan. Nothing even near Brooklyn. I knew Teddi was lying. At first I even thought you might be related to Kendrick—”

  “That’s a possibility. You know we all look alike.”

  She flinched as if I had struck her and I watched her brush her hair back with the same nervous gesture that Teddi used. That Thea had used. And perhaps Dessie might have also used.

  I thought of the clipping in my pocket. If I died and the clipping disappeared, that would be the end of everyone’s nervous condition. But it wasn’t going to be that way.

  “What did Teddi want?” she asked. Her voice had dropped to a whisper and an edge of impatience or panic had crept in.

  Be calm, speak softly, I said to myself as I looked at her. I could manage her impatience but panic was another matter once it got out of control.

  She shifted position on the edge of the packing crate and now the gun rested in her lap. Her eyes had narrowed so much I thought they had closed, but she was still on alert.

  “Teddi wanted to find out more about Thea’s death,” I said. “And since I live in Harlem, she thought I could help her.”

  “And were you able to?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Who do you think killed her?”

  “Someone who’s missing a diamond earring,” I said, expecting to play twenty questions for at least another hour, but I miscalculated. The hand with the gun flew up and her eyes blazed wide. She moved quickly from the edge of the crate.