by Ed Ifkovic
“Another smart-aleck remark.”
He was enjoying himself. “So be it. But not her usual stop-stop-stop-it banter. ‘Dougie, stop it.’ More so—‘I’m tired, Dougie, and you’re crazy. This night has worn me out. I’ve had it.’ Not exactly those words, but you get my meaning.”
I wondered out loud. “How bizarre! Noel and I were with you all a short time before. Yes, the bickering, even the slap that surprised us. But it all seems to go away. Even the slap—game-playing, immediately regretted. Belinda forgave. She even snuggled up to him, showed affection. After all, you were all going to the automat, the place where culinary arts surrender to the power of indigestion.”
He laughed a long time. “Miss Ferber, if you must know, I unwittingly suppose I stoked the fires.”
“How so?”
“This will not make me look good—what I tell you.” But his manner suggested some joy in the telling.
I took a sip of coffee. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
“A few days back I bumped into Belinda on the street, a little disturbed, anxious, fleeing a disagreeable brunch with Dougie at Lindy’s. She left Dougie behind at a table. She was distraught, so I walked her back to her rooms. She rambled, a torrent of clichés—you know, last straw, at wit’s end, cross to bear, a string of such nonsense. Although, surprisingly, she kept undermining her anger with apologies—‘I do love him, Corey. Of course, I do.’ Then, a run of bitterness. Quite compelling, I thought—a woman on the edge. I was the sympathetic ear. She said she was at a crossroads. I took that to mean she was leaving him.”
I wasn’t happy with him. “A leap for you, no? And something you supported?”
He smirked. “I could care less. Dougie’s a friend and all, but a romance with a singer can go nowhere. Lady Maud has to protect her vast monies.”
“And you told this to Dougie?”
“Unfortunately, that very night. I mean, Kitty told me something earlier. I guess Belinda complained to her. Still a little tipsy, I leaned in and whispered, ‘You’ve lost that girl, you know. She told me.’ I was being very Broadway myself.”
I sat up. “You were being cruel.”
He watched me for a long time. “You choose the words you want. Dougie and I come from a different world, Miss Ferber. Different rules.”
“So Dougie confronted Belinda?”
He nodded. “I’m afraid so. She didn’t react well. Hence the lovebirds’ explosion. Hence our hasty departure.”
I wagged a finger at him. “You’re not his friend, are you, Mr. Boynton?”
He fiddled with his coffee cup. Then, dramatically, he held my eye. “Look, Miss Ferber, I’ve known Dougie from years back. From New Haven, in fact. Rich boys at school. Yale camaraderie. Rah rah rah. The tables down at Mory’s. Families connected through bags of money and blue-green Hampton lawns. That sort of thing. I was Phillips Exeter, he was Horace Mann. But—no, to be truthful. To answer your question. Friendly, maybe. Same fraternity. An in-town pal. But Dougie was unpopular.”
“Why was that?”
A hint of self-congratulation crept into his tone. “Christ, Miss Ferber, you’ve met him. A child. He can add a column of figures lickety-split and slide the extra cash out of a sad widow’s meager bank account, but he stares with dumb wonder at a running water faucet.”
“Again, cruel.”
A slick grin. “Because I’m good at it.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
He smiled at me. “You know, I sort of liked him, the way you like a pesky child who annoys his elders. After we bumped into each other in the city, we’d see each other around town, like at the New York Yacht Club on Forty-fourth, at the clubs, and then we ended up having rooms at the Stanhope. He discovered me—assumed I wanted to be with him.”
“And you did.”
He leaned in, confident. “Dougie has money to spend. I have my father breathing down my neck. I’m used to—” he tugged at the sleeve of his tweed sports coat “—jackets from Donovan’s on Fifth. Twelve-dollar white starched dress shirts. Silk socks. I’m a playboy. He’s a…boy.”
“Do you think he killed Belinda?”
Startled, he waited a moment, his eyes stony, then he burst out laughing. “Of course not. Really, Miss Ferber. Why would he? People in our world don’t murder others. We have other ways of destroying their lives.” Impatient, he looked toward the door. “Where the hell is that girl?” A sly grin. “I guess we know where our Dougie is today. Hiding in an expensive Park Avenue lawyer’s office with his mommy doing all the talking.”
“Tell me about Kitty,” I said quietly. “What should I know about her?”
He shrugged. “What’s to tell? An unemployed chorus girl who trails in Belinda’s shadow like a Chinese concubine. Or—did trail after her.”
”Yet she can afford to live at the Claremont?”
“Daddy sends cash from back home in Grand Rapids. Just enough to keep the wolves from the door. A grain merchant, a squeezed-out living these days after the Crash, so I understand. But daddy is afraid for his little girl in the big, bad city, so the money rolls in. Maybe I should say—dribbles in. Just enough cash to fund the failed ambitions of his daughter.”
“I assumed you two were seeing each other.”
His laugh went on too long. “How quaint, dear Miss Ferber. Seeing each other. Courting on the veranda on a Sunday afternoon after a heavy pot roast dinner. God, no. I like Kitty. Or at least I think I do. Sometimes I do.” Hesitant, his eyes flickering. “She’s funny, friendly, someone to squire to a show or Roseland for a dizzy Charleston. But romance? Of course, she may have other ideas, but I can’t control that. She’s not…pretty. You obviously can see that. I know that makes me sound shallow and heartless, but I’m interested in pretty girls. Kitty is…mousy. Not unattractive, true, but too drab. She walks around the city like a Midwest farm girl who didn’t read the rule book.”
I broke in. “Unlike Belinda.”
“True.”
“Competition with Belinda?”
“Big time, but we weren’t supposed to notice.”
I waited a moment. “Did you find Belinda attractive?”
He hated the question, looking away, then darting a glance back at me. His face closed in, his eyes darkening. “Of course, she was stunning. I mean—mesmerizing onstage. In real life—a flawless beauty. It was wonderful to—you know, look at her. So…beautiful.” His voice became matter-of-fact. “But Dougie owned that cherished Ming vase. Case closed. Door shut. Gong rung. Finis.”
I persisted. “So your relationship with her was strictly friendly?”
His eyes flashed. I’d struck a nerve because he dipped his head into his chest and said nothing. He was debating what to tell me. He pulled his chair back, rocking it, as if ready to stand up, but looked toward the doorway. “Where is that girl? Christ, women who are late are especially unattractive.”
“Poor Kitty Baker. I guess the list of her unattractive characteristics keeps growing.”
Steely-eyed, unfriendly. “I don’t like waiting.”
“And men are never late?”
I could see him trying to relax now. “Men have reasons for being late.”
“Yes,” I countered, “they forget where they’re supposed to be. They need women to guide them.”
A harsh laugh. “You do not show any mercy, do you, Miss Ferber?”
“Only when warranted.” After a pause, I said, “Strangely, Mr. Boynton, you don’t seem hurt by Belinda’s death.”
“Of course I am. But she was Dougie’s world, not mine.”
Suddenly he reached across the table and grasped my hand, so electric a moment that I pulled back, furious. “Mr. Boynton.”
“You don’t like me, do you, Miss Ferber?”
But at that moment his eyes flashed to the doorway where a harried Kitty wa
s scurrying in, ignoring the waitress who addressed her, moving through tables and sloughing off her cloth coat. “I’m late,” she mumbled. “There are people everywhere. Some sort of protest. A food riot. Grubby people with signs. The cabbie sat in…”
I ignored her babble, speaking to Corey. “One last question for you. When you left the automat, you didn’t wait for Dougie?”
His eyes got shadowy as he caught Kitty’s stare. “I walked. A long walk. I was still a little tipsy—bootleg gin gives me a headache, I’m afraid—and so I walked. The crisp night air.”
“Where to?”
“Does that matter?” His brusque tone made Kitty twist in her seat, her eyes puzzled.
“Probably not. But I’m curious.”
He drew his tongue into his cheek but talked to Kitty. “The Spanish Inquisition, dear Kitty. Show Boat style.”
I grinned. “Thank you.”
“I wasn’t being kind.” He tapped the table with a finger. Tap tap tap. Morse code.
“Neither was I.”
Kitty’s brows twitched as she looked from me to Corey. “What’s this all about? I don’t know why I was summoned here.” She smiled feebly. A blot of red lipstick on a front tooth. She looked—vaguely clownish.
“I’m assuming, perhaps wrongly, that the two of you want to help Dougie. So Noel Coward and I are asking questions, at his bidding, as I told you on the phone. Noel’s at an unfortunate rehearsal today for Design for Living, so I’m by my lonesome.”
Kitty fretted, “I already talked to the police.”
“I know, I know,” I said hurriedly. “But if we’re to help Dougie, we have to examine every minute of that time at the automat. More so, what happened after you left. Some little detail—forgotten. A face remembered. Comments shared. Anecdotes. Little inconsequential moments. Any possible clue. A stranger’s passing word.” I paused. “Buzzy was there.”
She glanced at Corey, waited for him to nod at her. “I gotta tell you, Miss Ferber, I was sick of it all. Dougie snipping at Belinda, Belinda annoyed, even Corey here hissing and leaning in like—like Iago sharing fraternity secrets to the bumpkin Othello.”
“Dougie as Othello?” I wondered.
“Ignore her.” Corey’s words were unfriendly. Then, a sloppy grin, “Kitty disappeared in a taxi.”
Kitty was frowning. “You wanted to walk. It was freezing out. Sleet was falling, for God’s sake. Bums everywhere. I wanted to go to bed.”
Nervously, she took a compact from her purse and began checking her makeup, spotted the lipstick on her tooth. She was wearing a red-and-white striped wraparound dress, popular now, calf-length, that hugged her body snugly. A run of Bakelite enamel bracelets on her wrist. She’d painted her face dramatically—rose-tinted rouge, crimson lipstick. Worse—nails lacquered a deep red. I stared—Corey stared, but not favorably. It dawned on me—here was a different Kitty, one who suddenly allowed herself to be—glamorous. I thought, cynically, that she no longer had to compete with Belinda.
She was wearing a French-style blue beret, a Bohemian look that merely suggested affectation—and a huge desire to be looked at. Mousy, Corey had described her. An apt description for a small-boned freckled girl with wide midnight eyes who paled beside the luminous Belinda. Not pretty, again Corey’s words. But striking. Corey missed that in her features. There was a curious intelligence in her eyes, something he also neglected to see.
“Did Dougie leave you while you were waiting for a taxi?” I asked her.
She looked at Corey again, but he was ignoring her. She wasn’t happy about that.
Finally, she sighed. “Dougie was grumbling about Belinda alone back there, seething, hating him. On and on, intolerable. So I walked away.” She held up a finger. “Oh, yes, he mentioned a scarf. ‘My scarf, my scarf. A birthday gift from Lady Maud.’” She rolled her eyes. “A talisman from the oracle of Delphi.”
I looked at Corey. “You didn’t go back with him?”
He jutted out his chin. “I refused to—not that he asked me. They had to play out that scene by themselves. I was witness to too much nonsense. He moved away, so I went walking.” Corey’s tone had shifted. No longer the glib, abrupt speaker, his tone now struck me as defensive. “Don’t look at me. I wanted to get away from it all.” He tucked his head into his chest as though waiting for attack. He smirked. “I guess it didn’t work because I’m sitting here now with you. Talking about last night.”
“And I went home to bed.” Kitty threw both hands into the air. “The good girl at midnight.”
“Do you think Dougie went back and killed Belinda?” I asked her sharply.
She yelped, covered her mouth with her hand. “Please don’t ask me something so absurd.”
I leaned toward her. “I think you’re going to be asked that question by the police.”
“They have already asked me that.”
“And you said what?”
“Of course not.” She fiddled with a napkin, balling it up, then smoothing it out.
“Was Belinda leaving Dougie?” I asked suddenly.
Her voice got fluttery. She looked to Corey, but he was staring at her, a hint of a smile on his face. “Lord, these questions. I wanted no part of this. This is not why I came to Manhattan.”
Corey drummed his fingers on the table. “Miss Ferber likes to play games.”
“Only if I get to set the rules,” I added.
Kitty sat back, considered my question. “I know that Belinda was unhappy, but she—sort of liked Dougie. That’s what I thought. She did hint to me that it might not last.” She turned to face Corey. “I told you that. Remember? But, to tell you the truth, I often stopped listening to her. She could go on and on about her world, her successful life. She wanted me as a foil. A shadowy mirror she could look into. I was supposed to tell her what she wanted to hear.”
“What about what you wanted to hear?”
“Meaning?”
“My dear, you seem to crave gossip.”
“No, it’s just that I had to hear about her rich life now.” She flashed her eyes. “Do you know how boring that can become?”
“A life that you coveted, no?”
She looked stunned. “Hey, sister. Just a minute now.”
I smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m thinking out loud.”
“I’ll say. Write your novels, Miss Ferber.”
“What about Dougie? He’s good-looking, rich…”
She flared up. “Are you calling me jealous?” Then she laughed. “Of course, a little. Who wouldn’t be? She had everything. Those looks, that face. Adulation. The toast of Manhattan. A little unnerving for the rest of us peasants. It’s hard being in the presence of the noontime sun. You find yourself lost in shadows.” A heavy sigh. “She got everything, but that’s the way God works, right? There’s nothing I could do about it.” A fatalistic shrug. “I got my own destiny.”
“Which is?”
She said nothing.
Corey cleared his throat and answered for her. “The dreadful life of a gypsy. Broadway cattle calls that lead to a breadline.”
She glared at him.
I had something on my mind. “Belinda seems to have confided in both of you, but she never told Dougie she was leaving him?”
Kitty shook her head. “No, not really. I suppose not. I know I heard him”—she pointed a finger at Corey—“whispering that to Dougie at the automat.”
He yelled at her. “Not exactly.”
“Exactly,” she yelled back at him. “Do you think I’m deaf?”
“Old friends, chatting.”
She made a face. “If that’s what you call it.” She half-rose from her seat. “I don’t want to be here, Miss Ferber. This conversation is unnerving.” She looked around the restaurant. “I never liked this place. Look at these women. They sit here laughing at nothing. These wo
men have nothing to do but spend their husbands’ money.”
Corey snapped. “Then you better get yourself a husband.”
A nervous glance at him, a flicker of hope in her eyes. He turned away.
I persisted. “You don’t want to help Dougie?”
“I wouldn’t know how.”
“The truth.”
“The one thing that I do know is that she’d had it with her greedy brother, that money-grubbing no-talent.”
“Jackson? Tell me.”
Kitty twisted in the seat, uncomfortable. “Have you met him? I have.” She looked at Corey. “We both have. A failed actor or director or something, he is, but stupidly ambitious. He spouted this blarney about the soul of theater—or something. He saw Belinda as a ticket to his own life on Broadway. Yes, she was ambitious, but I think—you know, once you get to the top you start to wonder if it all was worthwhile. She got—tired. Fed up with it all. I know she sniped at him one time when we stopped in at that scary theater. He actually shoved her. She shoved him back. An ugly scene.”
I drank the last of the coffee. “I keep getting this image of Belinda as a pretty gold-digging girl, talented, but hungry for money. Cyrus Meerdom, then Tommy Stuyvesant, then Dougie. Maybe I’m working with a cardboard caricature. Am I wrong? Actors at the theater thought her—kind.” Out loud I wondered, “Who was this woman?”
Suddenly, her eyes flashing, Kitty confided in a low voice. “She was seeing someone else.”
Corey made a tsking sound. “For Christ’s sake, Kitty. You do run off at the mouth.”
She ignored that. “No, no, I mean it. She hinted it to me once. I don’t know for sure. A little drunk, maybe. But she said someone else…” She stopped. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
Watching her mask-like face, I believed she was making up a story. She had the look of a schoolyard girl tattling on a friend. But why lie now? “Back to Cyrus?”
She shivered. “God, no, though he seemed to be everywhere she was. Obsessed, that old fool. Smitten, drunk with her. He couldn’t get her out of his head. I wouldn’t put it past him if…” She shook her head. “Enough talk.” She gathered her gloves. “Dougie was all right, Miss Ferber—he’s a lapdog, yes, but harmless.” She looked at Corey, her expression flat. “You men are blinded by beauty. It makes you all walk into walls.”