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

by Ed Ifkovic

  “Well,” I began, “things are happening.”

  “What things?” From Dak.

  “Well, I have questions, I should say.”

  Suddenly Annika was not paying attention to me, her eyes in her lap. She was talking to herself. “Clorinda is in a horrible state. Oddly, she blames me.” A weak, unhappy smile, as she finally looked from Dak to me. “You, of course, Miss Ferber. You’re the principal culprit in this drama. But she says I scared him away.”

  Annika had undergone a troublesome change. The severe young woman, driven and fierce, had been transformed into a shaky, troubled wreck. She fidgeted, elbows on the table, then elbows off. A bead of sweat trickled down her chin, and she ignored it. Those agate eyes—a zealot’s determined stare—were cloudy and distant. When she spoke, her sentences trailed off into faint whimpers. Her “scared him away” remark was ragged and sputtering.

  Dak looked concerned. “Annika, I’ll get back home soon enough. You’re taking this too hard.”

  She shook her head languidly, as though under water. “But I doubt that you’re coming back to the church.”

  A long hard look. “No, I’m not.”

  She gasped and cried out, “Or to me.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Annika,” I started.

  She held up her hand. Her nails were bitten to the quick: lines of dried blood.

  “This is all wrong.” Her head swung back and forth. “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Mistakes made.” Then in a measured voice, “I must have prayed to the wrong God.”

  That made no sense. Dak looked helpless, his eyes catching mine, pleading. He didn’t know what to do with her, so catastrophic the change in her.

  “I thought I owed Annika this meeting,” Dak said. “It isn’t fair to her.” He nodded at her. “I haven’t been fair to you.”

  “I have to know,” she pleaded. “I’m left in the dark, Dakota.”

  I looked at Dak. “Annika’s right, Dak. And you know it. You have to be honest with her. Play fair.”

  That seemed to surprise Annika. Her eyes got moist. She mumbled, “Yes.”

  “I know, I know.” Dak was breathing in short bursts.

  “You know, I listen to Clorinda,” Annika went on. “She’s wise and God-like and…Dak’s mother…and I listen to her. But now she’s screaming and cold and bitter and—” she tapped the table furiously—“she tells me I should have listened better. I somehow missed the word of God.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Annika.” I touched her wrist gently. “You’re too hard on yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  For a second the old fierceness in her eyes. “Of course, I did. I listened.”

  She sat back, dropping her hands into her lap, resigned, her eyes closed. Her body swayed back and forth. “I’m guilty of leaving my old world behind, as bad as it was. The emptiness. But that emptiness wasn’t filled with all this.”

  Dak and I both exchanged looks.

  I cleared my throat. “Dak, would you mind answering that question I asked you earlier?”

  He glanced at Annika, tucked into her shell, and nodded. “All right, Miss Ferber. But I don’t know much about my father. Just what my mother told me. Why is it important?”

  “I don’t know if it is. But humor me.”

  “Well…” He scratched his head. “Let me see. An actor in Hollywood, he partied hard with my mother’s crowd, had bit parts in some Fatty Arbuckle comedies, really loved to play in westerns with William S. Hart, which is why I got this strange name, and then a streetcar hit him. I guess he was around my age now. My mother says I look like him—dark, olive-skinned, slim reedy body, high cheekbones, the black hair, even the loping walk.” He shrugged. “Devilishly handsome, as my mother says.” But the last sentence was caustic, cold.

  Annika looked up. Her voice echoed, “Handsome.” Then she looked back at her hands.

  “I get those things from him—plus my last name.”

  I waited a moment. Then the shocker: “Did you know he was married before he met your mother?”

  Dak sat up. “What? No, really?” A puzzled look. “What?”

  I filled him in on the tidbit unearthed from old Hollywood magazines. “And it seems you have a half-sister.”

  A crazy grin covered his face. “You’re kidding.” But immediately his eyes darkened. “A sister. That seems impossible.”

  “Why?”

  He glanced at Annika. “I mean, of course, it’s possible, but…but wouldn’t my mother have known?”

  “Maybe she does.”

  He yelped, slammed his palm on the table, then seemed embarrassed. “Maybe she does. But why not tell me?”

  “Maybe she had her reasons.”

  He shook his head vigorously, a flash of anger. “A sister. This is…nice.”

  “Nice?” Annika’s voice broke. Her eyes betrayed fear.

  Dak’s voice rose. “Hey, I just thought of something.” He swallowed and reached over to touch Annika’s arm. She jerked her hand back so quickly she nearly toppled a water glass. “My marriage. Nadine.” His eyes on Annika, a pleading look. “One of the reasons she fought my marriage, so she said, was because Nadine had been divorced. That is forbidden, a stain, a curse. Unacceptable. Nadine was damaged goods—important for me, the heir apparent to the Assembly of God kingdom. Divorce—and her husband’s suicide. Tobias despises—forbids—divorce. A betrayal of the sacred marriage covenant.” He bit his lip. “So if my father was divorced, well, she’d want to keep that a secret.”

  “A divorce? Scandalous?”

  He tapped his tongue with his finger. “Think of Tobias. The church. Tobias often rails out against divorce. The decline of Western civilization. The death of the family. Right, Annika?”

  Annika lifted a trembling hand. “Your mother sermonizes against divorce.”

  “Well,” I said, “it wasn’t Clorinda who got the divorce. Yes, she married a divorced man, but…”

  “It doesn’t matter. That’s why.” Dak concluded, “So Nadine and I were annulled…never married. But, you know, I’ll tell you something, Miss Ferber. As a little boy, I always felt something was strange. I could never put my finger on it, but whenever my mother talked of my father to me—this is after she returned to take over my life and I drove her crazy with questions—she always got a faraway look in her eyes, her voice hesitant, and she’d stammer. She always said the same few lines—like a part in a play. It always troubled me in the way unsaid things stay with you, and she’d shift the conversation.”

  “A divorce that bothered her. And a little girl growing up somewhere. Marcella Roberts.“

  “Somewhere,” Dak echoed. He punched the air dramatically. “I love the idea of a sister.”

  I thought of Loretta in New York, following up on that tidbit. I’d asked her to locate that young woman, if possible. What would that tell us? Philip’s first wife. The divorce. A mystery. Another Hollywood piece of the puzzle.

  The news seemed to exaggerate Annika’s depression. She sagged deeper into the chair, shoulders slumped. Dak kept eyeing her, concerned. Now, solicitous, he reached over and touched her shoulder. “Annika, you all right?”

  She shrugged him away. Then, quietly, “Why wasn’t I told about that? Clorinda told me everything. Why wasn’t I told? I had a right to know.”

  “Dak.” I shifted the subject, drawing his eyes away from her. “Another problem I have.”

  Annika was speaking over my words: “I need to leave. I’m expected back. Your mother…”

  “Did she send you?” I asked.

  Quietly, “No. She wouldn’t allow it, you know. But I had to know…to see Dakota.”

  “Good for you, Annika.”

  Surprise in her eyes as she looked at me, mixed with gratitude. “I’ve made a mistake, I know.”

  “Stop sayi
ng that.” Dak’s words came fast.

  Silence, then I repeated what I’d said. “Something is bothering me, especially after this conversation. Two things, actually.”

  They waited, the two of them, Dak anxious, Annika the picture of a slapped-around child. Then Dak grunted. “Sometimes your words alarm me, Miss Ferber.”

  No humor in my voice. “They’re meant to.” A pause. “Ilona told me you lay in wait for Evan that day, idling in your car, waiting. You purposely stalked him.”

  Dak’s face blanched and his mouth dropped open. “Why would she say that? Yes, as I’ve told Biggers, I spotted him, and followed. But I didn’t wait for him. Why would she want to get me in trouble?”

  I drew my tongue to the corner of my mouth. “Have you met your aunt?”

  “She’s wrong, Miss Ferber.” He looked shell-shocked.

  “Another thing. I’ve been thinking about that threatening note you received—the one that said you were next, presumably to be murdered, after Evan and Gus. And that strange note I received, telling me to back away.”

  Annika gasped out loud, then apologized.

  Tense, Dak whispered, “What about it?”

  “Ilona thought you wrote the first note to get attention. Which, of course, made little sense to me. Your mother was terrified but wanted to keep it away from Constable Biggers, though she knew he’d have to see it. Last night something dawned on me. Not so much the words, which were slapdash phrases from a dime novel perhaps, but the…the spelling.”

  Dak laughed nervously. “The spelling? Did you parse the grammar, Miss Ferber?”

  “I remember clearly the word ‘you’re’ as in ‘you’re next’ was misspelled ‘y-o-u-r’—a common enough misspelling, an indictment of the American school system.”

  “So?”

  “So when you sent a note to Evan, the one that was found in Gus’ satchel and shown me by Meaka, you used a similar construction but the correct spelling of ‘you’re’ in your note. Simple as that. The realization came to me suddenly—always there, nagging, until last night.”

  Dak waited, pensive. Then he said, “I didn’t think anyone thought that I wrote those stupid notes.”

  Annika spoke up. “Ilona shouldn’t have said that. Of course, Dak wouldn’t write such a foolish letter to himself. Or the note to you, Miss Ferber.”

  Dak was nodding.

  “It was an attempt to steer the police—however bumbling Constable Biggers might be perceived—away from Dak.”

  Dak was watching me closely. “What are you saying, Miss Ferber?” An edge to his voice.

  “I think you know where I’m going with this. Someone is obsessed with your innocence—and the need to provide cover. At first I thought it might be Annika here”—Annika made a gurgling sound, unattractive, then covered her mouth—“because of her devotion to the Cult of Dakota, newly established, Maplewood branch.”

  “You’re mocking me, Miss Ferber.” He smiled.

  “A little. It comes in handy as a tool.”

  Annika rushed her words, “No, not me.”

  “No,” I agreed, “not you, foolish though your behavior has been. But only one other person comes to mind, perhaps.”

  An echoey voice. Dak looked over my shoulder. “Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  “No.” Emphatic, strong.

  “Your mother seems to have little concern with the murder nowadays—or the apprehension of the killer. It’s as though all this horror hasn’t happened. What only concerns her is—you, Dak. She might not lie or cheat—good disciple of God that she is—but she’ll…well, dissemble. That note, including the one sent to me as well, had her handwriting all over it.”

  Dak didn’t like the tenor of my words. “No, she couldn’t. I mean, my mother’s dictatorial, vain even, over the top, God-maddened, if there’s such a word—but such a note is dangerous. The police would not look too kindly on it…” A deep breath. “I did it, Miss Ferber.” An astounding statement, so abrupt that Annika cried out.

  “Dakota, stop. You know you didn’t…”

  “I did it. I was tired of Constable Biggers trailing me.”

  “Stop it, Dak. You’re being childish and foolish. Of course, you love your mother, but her foolish act—perhaps a mother’s misguided stab at misdirection—shouldn’t be cause for your foolish act.”

  He sat back, sheepish. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what…”

  Annika broke in. “Clorinda did it.”

  The words hung in the air, frozen, stark. “Annika?”

  “She told me she did. She had to, she said. ‘My Dakota is in trouble.’”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” Dak said to her.

  Annika looked helpless, trembling, “How could I? Your mother is God’s daughter. She knows best.”

  Dak frowned. “Oh, Christ!”

  But Annika looked confused. “But she never mentioned any note to Miss Ferber. I don’t think that she did that she would have told me.…”

  “It makes a certain sense,” I went on. “Three friends—of sorts. Two murdered. Evan and Gus, dead. Dak is left, and he was not fond of the two dead men. Evan, obviously. Gus, probably.”

  “Why do you include Gus?” A question, his eyes wary.

  “Well, I’m convinced now his murder is somehow connected to Evan’s. I didn’t think so at first, but now it’s clear to me.”

  Dak looked perplexed. “But, well, Annika and I talked about it. A lot. I mean, Gus had got real involved, more and more each day, with that Nazi crap. Out in California, I remember, he started buying these books and yammering on about Aryan this, Aryan that. Master race this or that. We made fun of it, thinking it was nonsense. But then, like overnight, he got deadly serious. That’s when he disappeared. One time Evan mocked him and Gus stormed away, purple in the face. Then we knew he really was caught by it. ‘Hitler?’ I said to him once, mocking, but he yelled. ‘A great man! A leader!’ And he swelled up with pride.”

  “He had no problems being friends with you two?”

  A deliberate pause. “We weren’t friends. Not really, I mean, he and Evan seemed closer. But I could never understand their friendship. They didn’t like each other. I know they bumped into each other back in New York—that’s how Gus learned about Maplewood. To Evan’s horror! I was the oddball out there—even here. I was surprised when Gus appeared in Maplewood, but he claimed he needed work real bad. He couldn’t find a job in New York, he said. He couldn’t hold a job. Somewhere along the line he’d met Meaka Snow, and she was eager to listen to his nonsense, and she got more fanatical than him, pushed back at him, and they both went over the edge. I mean, he created her, and then she scared him, so fanatical she was. The two of them started wearing swastikas and pasting flyers on walls and poles. When he died, I—we”—he looked at Annika—“just thought, well, you reap what you sow.”

  Annika was nodding her head. “Reap what you sow. A Biblical judgment.”

  I drew my lips into a thin line. “No Biblical judgment here, I’m afraid. Just out-and-out murder. A convenient subway train and a mob scene. Calculated. Gus had advertised his plan to be at that Union Square rally that afternoon.”

  Annika squinted. “A Nazi hater, the paper said.”

  “No,” I insisted. “Why was he chosen from all those congregated on that platform to be shoved in front of that oncoming train? An old feeble man, whiskered, who became amazingly fleet of foot the minute the deed was done.”

  Annika sneered, “You’re not saying people think Dakota did that, are you? It’s pretty far-fetched.”

  “How so?” I glared at her, which made her squirm.

  “Miss Ferber, do you really see Dak doing such a deed?”

  “Of course not. But that’s not to say others might see it differently. Clorinda obviously feared Dak would be blamed for the second murde
r, too.”

  Annika suddenly looked scared and grasped at Dak’s elbow. He gave her a puzzled look.

  “Dak couldn’t have killed Gus,” she declared with such force that Dak leaned forward and stared into her impassioned face. Annika was rolling back and forth in her seat, a dervish, and her face was ashen, drawn. A wreck of a woman, I thought, someone whose mechanical spirituality had masked what was really there: a real concern for Dak. That concern was coupled with another awful thought: she knew she’d somehow lost him. So she sat there, a shattered woman, confused yet ready to do battle. “I have proof that Dak couldn’t have done it.”

  “Whoa,” Dak burst out.

  “And what is that?”

  “He was with me that night. I remember we heard about it the next day. You’d had dinner with Clorinda and Tobias, and Dak and I spent the evening doing missionary work.”

  Dak was fidgeting, his foot nervously tapping the floor. “Annika, for God’s sake. No, I wasn’t. I spent that night finishing Miss Ferber’s drawing for her. You know that.”

  She furrowed her brow. “Are you sure?” Then, “No, you didn’t. We were together. I remember.”

  Baffled, he looked at her. “You don’t need to lie to protect me, Annika.”

  “I’m not. We were together. You couldn’t be two places at one time.”

  Suddenly Annika looked baffled, as though she’d missed something. As Dak babbled about the evening spent in his rooms, drawing for hours, she struggled with her words. Almost under her breath, she begged, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” he insisted.

  But the look on her worn face was hard to interpret.

  She looked ready to faint. “Are you sure?” she whispered.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ilona House was leaving Simpson’s Bakery as I headed back to the inn. Distracted, I nearly collided with her, but she’d spotted me first and tried to step behind three chattering women. Avoiding them myself, I looked into her face. What I spotted was a mixture of dread and curiosity. She was holding a white box tried with string, cradling it against her chest.