Final Curtain: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries)

by Ed Ifkovic

  She closed up as the waiter came to take our orders. Clorinda refused to look into his face, tucking her head into her chest, hands buried in her lap.

  I breathed in. “Clorinda, you know I believe in Dak’s innocence. That belief seems to have acquired some currency in town. Everyone, it seems, defines me as his advocate.” I paused, a dreadful heartbeat. “But is it possible Dak killed Evan? Maybe Gus?”

  A long silence, her face frozen. “Edna!”

  “I mean, we have to consider…”

  Her words were laced with bitterness. “You’re doing it again, Edna. You turn words around, glibly, cruelly, and I feel…feel assailed by you.”

  “It’s a question we have to ask. Others are asking it. I have no power, but others do.”

  She half-rose from her seat. “Then what do we do?”

  “We follow Dak’s advice immediately.” I pointed to the note.

  She was nodding furiously. “Annika is having trouble with all this.”

  “About what?”

  “This murder, disruption, mayhem. This is not the life she planned on when she embraced my gospel. Dak’s wallowing in self-pity, drifting around, ignoring her to the point where she looks positively hurt.”

  “Clorinda, did you ever consider that Annika is a poor mate for your only son?”

  She eyed some diners walking by. Her voice seethed. “That’s ridiculous, Edna.”

  “Have you asked Dak what he wants?”

  An edge to her voice, short breathing. “Well, we’ve talked.”

  “But have you listened to him?”

  “Of course. Now you’re being ridiculous. You know him, Edna. Not like I do, of course, but enough. He’s charismatic, sensitive, a boy lost in his own romantic thoughts. Spiritual thoughts. The wild oats…”

  I showed my impatience. “I know, I know. I’ve heard that before. The blessed boy, prodigal. Fatted calves. Blessed is the frail…do dah, do dah. All I’m saying is that Dak’s confusion these days, his distractedness, is because he may want something different out of life. He doesn’t want to hurt folks he cares about. In the process he hurts everyone—mainly himself.”

  Her words were clipped. “And not want Annika? I’ve trained Annika. She is devoted to the church and to Dak. To me!”

  “But Dak may not be devoted to her.”

  She looked away, silent for a moment. “You don’t understand, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t think I’m wrong.”

  Suddenly her eyes locked with mine. “Are you ever wrong, Edna?”

  I smiled wistfully. “Never.”

  She harrumphed, very nineteenth century Tempest and Sunshine heroine, and lapsed into silence. She refused to look at me.

  Ilona joined us minutes later and stared from me to her sister, registering the awful silence. “What happened?”

  “Edna doesn’t believe what I’m telling her.”

  Ilona chuckled. “A woman of exquisite common sense.” Ilona turned to me. “Did Clorinda show you that note Dak received?”

  I nodded. “It confuses me.”

  “Not me. I know who wrote it.” She sat down and dropped her hands into her lap, a smile on her face—the good student ready to please the teacher.

  Clorinda interrupted. “Please don’t tell Edna that harebrained theory.”

  “Tell me.”

  Ilona sat up and rested her elbows on the table. A small woman like her sister, Ilona purposely effected a negative to her sister’s glossy print: where Clorinda was sensuous with a body accented by flowing robes and scarves and laces—a rainbow of pastels that made her seem a dizzy fugitive from a Grimms’ fairy tale—Ilona wore drab unstylish dresses or, for this dinner, a mannish brown suit, square-cut, with shoulder pads that blunted her upper arms. But she chose lipstick—Clorinda wore none—that made her mouth seem a bold smear of bright red. A ring on one finger had a black topaz mounted in a square setting. A rectangular rhinestone brooch. It was almost as though she mastered Clorinda’s round and flowing look, then purposely, viciously, countered it so as to make Clorinda look a little foolish, the aged ingénue still flitting across her own stage. It was as cruel a mockery, I thought, as any I’d seen. And, as with my own sister Fannie, a woman always poised to remind me of my unwed state and my unlovely appearance, I’d weathered a lifetime of similar savage sabotage.

  “Dak wrote the damn note.” Ilona sat back, watching as Clorinda winced at the mild curse.

  Clorinda shut her eyes. “Why would you say that?” Tears welled at the corners of her eyes.

  “Because you know it’s true.”

  “That’s quite an accusation.” I sat back, arms folded, fascinated by the dynamic of the two sisters.

  “It’s a way of getting attention, stupidly trying to take the heat off him.”

  Clorinda was sputtering. “Foolishness, Ilona. Your usual foolishness.”

  The waiter placed a dish in front of Clorinda, but she pushed it away. Ilona eyed it and picked up a fork. Lips pursed, Clorinda pushed the dish close to her and shot Ilona a look.

  “The kind of stunt he’d pull when he was a boy—to get people to pay attention. ‘Look at me! Look at me! I’m so cute.’”

  “Well, perhaps if you’d treated him better.”

  Ilona again flared, “I gave up my young life for him. Wasn’t that enough? I could’ve married…”

  “He always loved you.” She hissed the words.

  “So you say.”

  I stepped in. “The two of you seem content to barter Dak’s love…”

  Ilona was cutting. “Edna, you don’t understand what happened back then.”

  “Well, tell me then. Dak these days is threatened with arrest for murder. Serious business, really. And yet you two play out some fierce and bitter memory that cripples everyone. And somehow—I don’t know how—that memory, Dak’s boyhood, plays a part in the murder.”

  “Nonsense!” From Clorinda.

  Ilona said nothing but wore a thin, ironic smile.

  “Ilona is angry at Dak.”

  “But why?” I pleaded.

  “I’m not angry at Dak. I’m angry at you.” She shot a contemptuous look at her sister.

  Clorinda let out a fake laugh. “Oh, really?”

  Ilona addressed me, twisting her body so that she was turned away from her sister. “Edna, I once had a chance for happiness. I was engaged, believe it or not. I was—comely, even pursued, but shy. While Clorinda was chasing dreams in Hollywood—she was always the runaway spirit, uncontrollable, soaring above the trees—I sat at home with a cruel and nasty father. ‘Yes, Father. No, Father.’ The country doctor, loved by patients, fawned over by the ladies with their mineral salts and garden herbs, but a man who disliked his own daughters. You could see his dislike—not indifference, dislike—such a face when you spoke to him. Probably because they resembled a wife who conveniently died to get out of the house. And I had escaped, too. But the Great War and a bloody battlefield in France took care of that. My Charlie died. End of story. And I was appointed the spinster daughter to tend to that madman.”

  Clorinda lisped, “Father was a saint.”

  Ilona, sarcastic, “Clorinda imagines all kinds of saints around her. Father, Dakota, even—well, truly—herself.”

  “He was. You…”

  She raised her voice. “And then, just as I settled into my virginal bed in the old homestead, sleeping on the bed I still sleep on, shriveling up year after year as we speak, Clorinda, the madcap screen non-legend, marries the handsome actor who then dies. Yet the career had to go on, and Father, a man who despised the stage and Hollywood and, well, fun, demanded she deliver little Dakota—he of the preposterous name—see what happens when you go West in America?—to a stable life away from the hullabaloo of California. Father had already failed raising two children, so he saw no proble
m adding a third. The ultimate parental hat trick. And there I was, appointed surrogate mother.”

  I held up my hand. “But it seems to me you would love a child like Dak. You seem to dislike him so.”

  “I did. I suppose I still do. A troublesome boy, always acting out. I didn’t know what to do. But Father kept telling him—your real mother is coming home. Any day now, the prodigal mama. So Dak looked beyond me. And then Clorinda found Jesus under a palm tree. And she moved from Father’s blacklist of fallen women to the Blessed Mother Herself, the itinerant Holy Roller on the broken-down bus. A life of poverty, but a life cuddling with God. And once Father died Dak was scooped up and taken on the road. When they stopped back home in Maplewood, Dak was cold, distant. He looked beyond me.”

  “He’s a moody boy.” Clorinda was looking at me. “A special boy.”

  A flash of anger. “You bad-mouthed me to him. Told him stories. He ignored me, looked at me as if I was—I don’t know—a dangerous stranger. You smothered him, Clorinda. You fed him God and not love. God is no answer for ruining a child.” A loud, raucous laugh. “You envisioned yourself some marked-down Madonna with a scrawny Jesus, bringing your message to the boondocks. Dak served as a prop for you. A theater prop. Him upon that stage singing his sloppy song. No wonder he fled to Hollywood. You made him vain and hollow. And you told him he could inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

  “I saw in him what God planted there.”

  “Bratty children must get on God’s nerves, Clorinda. Why not? They get on everyone else’s. You turned him against…himself. That sullenness…that distance. You wanted him all to yourself. You never shared him. Ever.”

  Clorinda’s voice rose. “He is my child.”

  “He was mine for a while.”

  “You borrowed him.”

  “He wasn’t furniture, Clorinda.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “And he’s not the savior of mankind now.”

  “Yes, he is. Tobias has plans.”

  Ilona chuckled. “For a spiritual lady, Clorinda, you do have a love of worldly trappings.” She pointed to the diamond earrings Clorinda wore.

  “Tobias has been blessed.”

  “Yes, by a rich, foolish mother. He was more your savior than anyone else.” Ilona faced me, her face flushed. “When Tobias entered the picture, everything changed. Suddenly Clorinda had enough clout to sponsor God.”

  Clorinda tsked. “You are so irreverent. Perhaps if you heard one of my sermons.”

  “I’d have to take to my bed. A welcome migraine, surely.”

  Clorinda lapsed into silence, a faraway look in her eyes. One of her hands picked carelessly at a piece of bread, but she seemed dreamy, her lips trembling. “I fear it’s all slipping away.”

  “What?”

  “My church. All I’ve worked for—for Dak. For God!” She reached across the table and grasped my hand. Her grip was tight, fierce. “Scandal. Scandal, Edna. Ilona doesn’t understand, but scandal eats at—corrodes—rots—until there is nothing left but empty pews. Dakota has been a foolish boy, allowing himself to be a part of that world. If he had stayed in the chapel…It’s driven us to our first words. Our first tension.” She was whispering now, the words choked out. “Tobias is losing faith in Dakota. Can you believe it?”

  Ilona scoffed. “The son of God laid bare.”

  “Stop it, Ilona,” Clorinda snapped.

  Ilona caught my eye. “Tobias’ utter infatuation with Clorinda is an umbrella that covers both me and Dakota. There may be a problem in paradise…”

  “Ask Annika,” Clorinda added. “Annika ignored Tobias the other day. Unforgivable. I have created that child in my image—you know she was a lonely orphaned child from an uncaring family of distant aunts in Newark—and now she is slipping away.”

  “Of course, she isn’t.” Ilona winked at me. “You have that girl under your spell. You managed to wipe out all traces of her own personality, filling in the cavity with Jesus Christ and the baubles you and Tobias toss her way.” A hearty laugh. “You’re angry because it didn’t work that way with Dakota. Such a willful streak in so weak a boy. Imagine!”

  Clorinda was shaking her head. “Tobias yelled at Annika for something. Tobias never yells at anyone.”

  “Maybe it’s about time.”

  Tired of this sisterly bickering, I shifted the subject. “Dak dropped off the most exquisite drawing for me, a landscape…”

  Clorinda grunted. “Oh Lord, all that doodling.”

  “He’s talented,” I insisted. “The hours spent on his art…well, I was touched.”

  “You mean he actually finished something? His rooms are crammed with half-done canvases and watercolors.” Ilona smiled. “He loses interest…”

  “Well, not this time. It’s a charming landscape.”

  Clorinda was staring over my shoulder, her face contorted with a look that was both baffled and stunned. I started to say something in defense of Dak the artist, but that sudden transformation silenced me. The prophetess of unconditional love now looked ready to faint—or to scream. It startled, quite.

  Ilona and I both turned to see Frank and Nadine walking into the restaurant.

  Frank looked grim-faced, though Nadine, stepping in front of him, was laughing, looking back over her shoulder at the older man. He was shaking his head like a befuddled parent teased by his child. It was, I thought, a curious tableau, those two stage folks somehow connected to Dak. While we watched, silently, the maitre d’ seated them at a table some twenty feet from us, handed them menus, and Frank took out reading glasses and positioned them on the edge of his nose. As he did so, he absently glanced around the room, and froze. He mouthed something to Nadine, and the smile disappeared from her face.

  “Clorinda?” I thought I detected a little concern in Ilona’s tone, which surprised.

  Clorinda said nothing, yet she didn’t avert her eyes. Her eyes flashed utter hatred now.

  Nadine, I thought. Clorinda once again dealing with the sweet temptress wooing Dak away from God and empire. The wife who disappeared in a heartbeat. The waving of a magician’s wand. Nadine, whose presence in Maplewood—through my indiscreet revelation—so shocked Clorinda. Nadine, considered so safely in Dak’s Hollywood past, a frivolous and transitory wedding, playing home among picturesque California palm trees. Nadine, conveniently annulled out of mind. The marriage that never happened. Nadine, back again. Nadine, somehow the electric current that tied Dak to Evan—and now somehow to Frank.

  Yes, I thought, Clorinda’s unrelieved stare, malevolent and arctic, took in the inauspicious Nadine.

  Then, in a hasty retreat, Frank and Nadine, withering under Clorinda’s furious look, pushed back their chairs and shuffled out of the restaurant. The waiter began speaking but Frank’s hand flew out—no, no. He was shaking his head.

  But watching them leave, I realized something awful. Clorinda was not displaying her venom toward the hapless young girl. Rather, her eyes were locked on Frank.

  Her breath came in short, frightful gasps. A gagging sound from deep in her throat. Then, barely audible, a word: “Frank.”

  She watched as he left the restaurant, but she never took her eyes off the entrance. Her hand gripped a fork so tightly her knuckles were white.

  She looked as though she’d seen a ghost.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The rehearsal was over, though I’d simply gone through the motions, distressed as I was by last night’s scene in the restaurant. When Frank was in the wings and I stepped off the stage, I called to him. He glanced over, tilted his head toward an imaginary caller, and disappeared.

  George overheard me. “Edna, what are you up to?”

  “A conversation, that’s all.”

  “With Frank?”

  “It seems his presence in leafy Maplewood was unknown to Clorinda—until last
night. He absolutely shocked her into silence and, I’m afraid, into a numbing anger that is not appropriate for this…this ambassador of God.”

  “Edna, I knocked on your door last night, but you weren’t in. I wanted to hear about the dinner with Clorinda and Ilona.” He rolled his tongue into his cheek. “Obviously it was eventful.”

  “Not really. But at the end…”

  “Edna, you keep disappearing and I expect another body to be found.”

  “Don’t joke, George. There really is a danger.”

  His face got tight. “What do you know?” he stammered, nervous.

  “There are a bunch of pieces coming together, but something is still missing. The how these people are connected. Everyone knows one part of the large picture, and I need to put it together. I keep talking to everyone. You know, George, people talk and talk and eventually somebody will say something.”

  George rubbed his chin with a finger. “You’re making me nervous.”

  “I make everyone nervous. I’m hoping I’m making the killer nervous.”

  “Edna, is that wise? We’re a couple days away from opening night, and I don’t want to go to the closing of your casket.”

  “Not funny, George.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  I was nodding rapidly. “Let’s take a drive after lunch.”

  “What are you planning, Edna?”

  I caught a glimpse of Frank moving behind some scenery, turning his body away. He stepped out onto the stage, caught my eye, and then darted out of sight. George caught me looking. “Edna, what part does Frank play in this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So Clorinda recognized him?” he asked.

  “That was my impression—and she wasn’t happy to see him. And it had nothing to do with Nadine.”

  George was looking in the direction of the disappeared Frank. “What you’re saying suggests that she didn’t know he was working here. Dak never mentioned his name at home, obviously. Well, he said he was forbidden to mention anything to do with the theater.”