Homicide for the Holidays

by Cheryl Honigford

  Exactly the opposite, she thought, looking into his widened blue eyes. He was the one who seemed worked up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess it has.”

  He squeezed her shoulders and then let go. “Understandable, my dear. Perfectly understandable.” He turned his back to her again and charged toward a harried-looking middle-aged woman sitting in front of a typewriter.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. I’d like to speak with the manager.”

  “Regarding?” she murmured without looking up.

  “The safe-deposit box of a deceased client of mine.”

  She glanced up, eyes wary above her half glasses. Vivian could almost hear the woman’s exasperated sigh.

  “And please mention that we have a common acquaintance—Leonard Halifax.”

  “One moment.” The woman stood and disappeared behind one of the partitioned glass segments in the wall-long oak cubicles. They watched her speak to a short, mustachioed man. The man looked at Uncle Freddy, squinted, and then smiled before waving Freddy into the office.

  “Wait here,” Freddy said to Vivian. “I’ll handle this.”

  Freddy spoke with the man for only a moment before he was back by Vivian’s side.

  “Spot of luck. He’s agreed to waive all the official nonsense.”

  “Official nonsense?”

  Freddy glanced around the cavernous room.

  “I showed him the paperwork—proving that your father is deceased and that I’m the executor of his estate. But technically, the box is supposed to be inspected by a tax man first to make sure that your father wasn’t hiding scores of cash or anything of value—as a way to skirt death taxes and such. The tax man always wants his share. I told him we’re short on time and promised to report anything out of the ordinary.” He smiled at her, but the expression did not reach his eyes. “Finding any of that is highly unlikely, of course,” he said.

  Not according to recent discoveries, Vivian thought. She considered the stack of bills, now missing, and considered Freddy as well. He was not himself. Oh, he was putting on a good show, but there was nervousness underneath his confidence today. He had about as much idea of what was in that safe-deposit box as she did, she thought, and it worried him.

  “Whatever we find in there,” she said, nodding her head toward the open safe door. “It’s all in confidence?”

  “Of course,” he said. “We’ll call it attorney-client privilege.”

  “You won’t say anything about this to Mother?”

  Freddy narrowed his eyes. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “Not just yet.” Regardless of what they found, she didn’t want her mother to catch wind of a mysterious safe-deposit box before Vivian could work everything out in her own head.

  Freddy nodded curtly and held out his hand. Vivian stared at him.

  “The key,” he prompted.

  She shook her head. “I’m coming in with you.”

  “It’s not necessary,” he said, frowning. “It probably just contains insurance papers.”

  Vivian stared impassively back at him. “I’m coming in with you.”

  “It’s likely an empty box, Vivian,” he said. “I don’t want you to waste your time.” His voice was tight. He’d expected her to roll over, to defer to his authority in this important matter. But Vivian was determined to see with her own eyes whatever was in that box. And Freddy seemed just as determined that she didn’t.

  “I’m already here. It’s no trouble.”

  He looked down his nose at her, but turned without a word and headed into the vault area.

  The huge, round metal safe door was open. The manager pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and stepped ahead of them to unlock the iron bars of the interior gate. The metal gate swung open silently, and Vivian stepped over the threshold and into the room. The air was stifling and close. She fought the sudden urge to turn and run.

  “Mr. Hannigan, this is Vivian Witchell, the daughter of the deceased.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Witchell.”

  Vivian nodded and scanned the rows of metal boxes, all identical except for the number stamped onto the small plaque in the front of each. Mr. Hannigan pulled a brass key out of his jacket pocket and put the key into one of the locks on a box about halfway up on the left wall: 242. There it was, she thought. It looked so harmless. She exhaled. It was now or never. She pulled the string from under the collar of her dress and up over her head. She handed the matching key to Freddy without a word.

  Mr. Hannigan inserted Vivian’s key in the second lock and turned, opened the door, and then pulled the flat metal box from the wall and handed it to Freddy.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” he said with a curt little nod. He left them alone in the vault, glancing once over his shoulder as he stepped through the iron gate. Vivian shivered as he closed and locked it behind them.

  She returned her attention to Freddy and the shallow metal drawer he’d set on the desk in the center of the room. He stood staring down at it, his lips pursed, his hands on his hips.

  “What’s in it?”

  He stared into the box without answering. His expression hadn’t changed. Vivian stepped forward and forced herself to look down. Her heart was pounding, her palms slick with sweat.

  Inside the box lay a book—perhaps ten inches by twelve with a plain brown cardboard cover. A book? What could be so important about a book that it needed to be kept under lock and key inside a bank vault? She exhaled and reached out to pick it up. Freddy shifted toward her as if he was going to reach out and stop her, but in the end he remained unmoving, unspeaking.

  Vivian slid her fingertips down the front cover. There was nothing remarkable about it so far. She scooped the book up and placed it on the desktop in front of her. She opened the front cover. On the inside in pencil it read: July 1929—Racquet.

  Racquet—the same name as on the outside of the envelope in her father’s drawer. She glanced at Freddy.

  “What’s Racquet mean?” she asked. She already knew the answer, of course. But she wanted to know if Freddy knew, and if he did, whether he would tell her.

  Freddy didn’t answer her, but she’d seen his lips purse at the mention of the gambling club.

  “Racquet…” He looked up, eyes trained on the ceiling as if he were searching his memory for where he may have heard the term. “Ah yes, I believe that was some sort of illegal gambling concern in the suburbs. Gone now.”

  Vivian sighed an internal sigh of relief. He hadn’t lied to her. She didn’t mention that the same name had been written on the outside of the cash envelope. She wasn’t sure why.

  “Do you know what all of this means?” She passed a hand over the scribbled entries—a jumble of letters and numbers.

  He flipped through the pages. “Receipts of the club, I suppose.”

  “Why would my father have had something like this?”

  Freddy slapped the ledger shut and Vivian jumped, startled by the noise in the small suffocating room.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know.” Freddy stared down at the ledger for a moment longer and then up at her. “If I had to guess, I would say he’d been keeping it safe for a client.”

  “What kind of a client?”

  “The kind that would deal intimately with illegal gambling concerns in the suburbs, Viv.”

  She shot a quick glance at Freddy’s face. He was serious.

  “My father had clients…like that?”

  Freddy’s expression didn’t change, but the look in his eyes told her all she needed to know. The answer was yes; her father had clients like that. And now Freddy wanted her to stop asking questions.

  “My father gambled, didn’t he?”

  Freddy stared at her for a moment, taken aback by the question. Then he sighed and looked up at the ceiling again. “Yes, Viv, he did. Som
etimes.”

  “At the Racquet?”

  His eyes stayed trained on the ceiling. “Sometimes.”

  “Did you gamble there?”

  “Once or twice.”

  Where exactly had Freddy gone when he’d excused himself from dinner the other night? He had certainly been gone long enough to sneak up the back stairs to her father’s study and write that note in the drawer. And if he’d written that note, then he’d also known about the envelope. Could he have taken it after all? That envelope had contained enough cash to cover any of Freddy’s recently incurred debts.

  “Do you still gamble?”

  “Me?” His blue eyes were wide when they met hers. He seemed genuinely surprised by the question. “Sometimes I go to the track. Why?”

  “Have you been there lately?”

  “They don’t run horses in the winter, Viv. What’s this all about?”

  Vivian felt herself blush. Of course they didn’t run races in the winter. This was Chicago, not Hialeah. She felt ridiculous for pressing the subject. Freddy couldn’t logistically have taken the money, and why would he have taken it if he knew Vivian was sure to find out?

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Well, it was the way you were acting the other night, I suppose. It’s got me worried about you.”

  Freddy exhaled through his nose. “I behaved boorishly, and I’m sorry for that. I should apologize to your mother, shouldn’t I?”

  Vivian nodded. Not that she would recommend voluntarily entering that sort of conversation with her mother, but he should.

  “It’s all this with Pauline. I was feeling terrible, so I had a few cocktails too many. That’s all.”

  And what was with his attitude toward Oskar? The question was on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t ask it. Jealousy, the green monster, rearing its ugly head. Could that really be it—after all this time?

  “I’m sorry about Pauline,” she said, and was surprised to find that she meant it. She’d never liked Pauline, but she didn’t enjoy seeing Freddy in pain.

  He didn’t say anything, but he reached over and squeezed her shoulder awkwardly. Then he reached for the ledger, and Vivian’s hand shot out to grab it first.

  “I’d like to take it,” she said, shrugging as she clutched the book to her chest.

  Freddy hesitated, his eyes lingering over the ledger in her arms. Then he smiled—a closed, tight-lipped smile. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But if I were you, Viv, I’d let the whole matter lie. Your father was a fine man. I don’t know why you insist on digging around, trying to find things to make you believe otherwise.”

  She didn’t answer, and after a moment, he turned to return the box to its position in the wall. He shoved it in with a dull screech and closed the safe-deposit box door. She held her hand out for the key. As he dropped it into her open palm, another thought occurred to her. Freddy and her father had a safe in their office. Why not keep the ledger there? The answer, of course, had to be that her father hadn’t trusted Freddy. And it occurred to her that maybe she shouldn’t trust him either.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Love & Glory went live at two fifteen, and they did a run-through and rehearsal in the hour before they went on the air. Vivian had kept on as Donna in Love & Glory, despite her busy schedule with The Darkness Knows. She didn’t need the show, but the show needed her, and she would play the part of the dutiful wife as long as they wanted her. These sappy fifteen-minute melodramas tended to have fluid plotlines, and it was only a matter of time until she was written out. It couldn’t come soon enough, in Vivian’s opinion.

  All of this work was running her ragged. Two months ago, she had been bursting at the seams to take on as many parts as they could throw at her. Now, things were more complicated. She was more secure in her role as Lorna Lafferty in The Darkness Knows. She had two months’ worth of Thursday night shows under her belt and whispers of a move to Hollywood in the works. No, she didn’t need Love & Glory at all, but she kept on anyway. It was the professional thing to do. And if there was anything Vivian prided herself on, it was being professional.

  She stopped by Imogene’s desk on the twelfth floor on her way to rehearsal. Imogene was filing her nails, a script open in front of her on the desk.

  “Genie, can I use your telephone?”

  “Sure.” She glanced at the ledger Vivian held and raised her eyebrows. Vivian ignored her, perching herself on the edge of Imogene’s desk. She reached over and dialed Charlie’s number. Maxine answered on the first ring with a breathy “Mr. Haverman’s office.”

  “Hello, may I speak to Mr. Haverman please?”

  She saw Imogene’s eyebrows shoot up, and Vivian turned away.

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Vivian Witchell, Mr. Haverman’s old friend.”

  “One moment, please.” She heard the thunk as the receiver was placed not so delicately down on the desktop and the muffled click of Maxine’s heels as she walked to Charlie’s office door to announce her call. Another second later, there was the click of Charlie picking up his office extension.

  “So what did you find?”

  “A ledger from the Racquet Club dated July 1929,” she said.

  He was silent for a long moment. “Just the ledger?”

  “Yes. We didn’t get a chance to look through it.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “Yes. It’s right here.” She patted it with her free hand.

  “Can I come over and have a look?”

  Vivian turned even farther away from Imogene and lowered her voice.

  “Well, I’m at the station right now. I won’t be home until this evening, but you can meet me there—say nine o’clock?”

  “At your house?” She heard the hitch in his voice.

  “You’d rather meet somewhere else?” She knew it was silly, but if she could get him alone, maybe he’d remember why he’d liked her in the first place.

  “No, no, that’s fine. Nine o’clock.”

  “Oh, and I’ve moved into the coach house out back. Go directly there, not to the main house.”

  “The coach house.”

  “See you then.”

  She hung up the receiver and looked at the ledger on her lap. She brushed her fingers over the cover. A ledger kept in a safe-deposit box and not the safe in her father’s office. The ledger to a gambling house in notoriously lawless Cicero of 1929.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  Vivian turned to find Imogene staring at her expectantly, a red pencil now clutched in her hand. “You’ve been holding out on me. I do believe I heard you invite one Charlie Haverman to your house this evening.” She put on a breathy little-girl voice and said, “Meet me at the coach house…where I live all alone…”

  “Stop,” Vivian said, rolling her eyes. “Yes, well, he has to meet me so he can look at this ledger.” She tapped the hard cover of the book on her lap.

  Imogene smirked. “He could meet you just as well at the Tip Top Café.”

  He could, Vivian thought. He could theoretically meet her at any number of places. But it would be better to be alone.

  “So what’s this all about?” Imogene’s eyebrows drew together at the bridge of her nose as she fixed Vivian with a determined stare. “Mysterious ledgers, detectives on call… This isn’t a flimsy excuse to get back in touch with Charlie, is it? What have you gotten yourself into now?”

  Vivian sighed. “My father’s locked desk drawer,” she whispered.

  “The cash.”

  Vivian nodded. “And now this”—she tapped the cover of the ledger—“kept in a safe-deposit box at the First National.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. And that’s why I’m having Charlie meet me. I’ve hired him to help me look into all of this—like you suggested.”
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  Imogene smirked and raised a penciled brow. “And I thought the detective told you to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “He did.” Vivian said, frowning. “It’s complicated.”

  “I’ll say.” Imogene put the end of the pencil in her mouth and chewed it. She removed it and pointed the unchewed end at Vivian. “Has he told you why he disappeared on you?”

  Vivian looked up at the ceiling as the frustration of that conversation returned to her. “Graham,” she said.

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes,” Vivian said. “Charlie seems to think I’ve chosen Graham over him—which is ridiculous. Well, not completely, I suppose. And I can’t tell him otherwise, because—”

  “Because it’s the truth?”

  “Yes. No.” Vivian shook her head. “I tried to explain, but Charlie won’t hear it. He cuts me off and calls me his friend and tells me that’s all in the past.”

  “Is it?”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  Imogene raised her eyebrows. “You’re planning a seduction scene.”

  Vivian blew air out of her nose at how ludicrous that sounded, but she didn’t deny it. That was the plan, she supposed, if she had any sort of plan at all. A seduction scene. The very phrase was preposterous—something that Jean Harlow tried on Clark Gable in movies like Red Dust. Vivian had never had to seduce anyone before. Men had always come after her. Until now.

  “This is a fine mess you’re in,” Imogene said, shaking her brown curls.

  “You can say that again. Can you keep this in your desk while I’m at rehearsal?” She handed the ledger over to Imogene.

  “I suppose.”

  “It’s an important book. Don’t let it out of your sight.”

  “Sure,” Imogene repeated, regarding the unassuming brown ledger with a dubious expression.

  Vivian watched Imogene slide it into her desk drawer. The book appeared unassuming, but Vivian suspected its looks were deceiving.