by Maia Chance
8
Berta and I hastily packed our suitcases, and then I found Cedric wedged like an infant porpoise between two Labradors on the drawing room hearth. I extracted him. We were about to leave the house when I hesitated. Maybe I could meet Ralph in the city today. Maybe we could patch things up. Because as flattering as Eustace’s attentions were, they only reminded me of how achingly I missed Ralph.
“You go ahead, Berta. I’m going to pop into Rudy’s study and make a quick telephone call.”
Berta regarded me shrewdly. “To Mr. Oliver?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Because Lord Sudley’s attentions are keeping the embers of romance stoked in your bosom?”
“No.”
“Hmph.” Berta carried Cedric, her handbag, and her small suitcase outside.
I left my suitcase by the front door, but took my handbag and the sockful of diamonds to Rudy’s study. There, I found Glenn Monroe in a mustard silk robe with his slippered feet on the desk. He was speaking into the telephone receiver.
“So if you keep on throwing these rotten scripts at me, I’m gonna have to walk away, got it?” he said. He glanced up, saw me, and smiled. “Listen, I’ve gotta go—and I mean it, enough of this crap. I’m up to two bottles of Alkacine a day. Do you really want that on your conscience? Yeah. See you Sunday.” Glenn hung up. “Morning, Lola. Looking for the blower?”
“Yes—that is, if you’re finished with it.”
“For the moment.” Glenn drew a brown glass medicine bottle from his robe pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took a pull. “It’s not what you think—it’s Alkacine. The radio station doesn’t give me headaches, but it sure is killing my stomach.”
I gave a sympathetic nod. Alkacine was a drugstore brand of milk of magnesia. Berta used it from time to time for her own heartburn.
“I gotta drink this stuff around the clock or I feel like an active volcano,” Glenn said. “But I’ll leave you to it.” He swung his feet off the desk and stood.
“Before you go, Mr. Monroe, I wished to ask you a question.”
“O-kayo.”
“Well, to begin with, Mrs. Lundgren and I are private detectives—”
“You don’t say!”
“—and Lord Sudley hired us to look into Rudy’s death. He has reason to believe there might’ve been foul play.”
“Detective dames. Huh. Sounds like something out of the pictures.”
I chose my words carefully. “You left the drawing room to make a telephone call shortly before the shot was fired in Rudy’s bedroom.”
Glenn’s friendly expression slid off. He suddenly looked pinched and suspicious. “What’re you getting at?”
“Did you see anything amiss during that brief period?”
“No. I was right here at the study desk, actually, with the door open. The only person I saw was Coral passing by when she came downstairs after her fight with Rudy. She didn’t notice me and I was on the telephone with the station, so I didn’t call out to her. She won’t be able to back me up.” Glenn twisted the Alkacine bottle in his hands. “A minute or two after that, there was the shot upstairs. I got off the telephone in a hurry and went to investigate.” Glenn unscrewed the bottle cap and took another swig. “I think I need to go back to bed for a few hours. I couldn’t sleep last night. Kept thinking I heard voices calling my name.”
“Voices?”
Glenn winked. “I guess it was the Montgomery ghost. Guess she’s not too happy these days.” He slipped past me.
I shook off the creepy-crawlies—I do not believe in ghosts—went to the desk, picked up the telephone, and rattled off Ralph’s telephone number to the exchange girl.
He picked up after five rings.
“Ralph? Hello. It’s me.” A pause. “Lola.”
“Morning.” His voice was blurred with sleepiness. Maybe a little aloof. “Where the heck are you?”
“In Connecticut on a case.”
“Not the Montgomery death I read about in the extras last night?”
“That’s the one.”
“Sheesh. Be careful, kid.”
He still calls me kid.
“Don’t call me kid,” I said crisply.
“You’re the boss.”
“I’m glad that’s settled.” I took a deep breath. “I telephoned because I—”
“Wanted to apologize?”
“Apologize? For what?”
“Telling me that you hate me comes to mind.”
“Oh. That. That was because you said—”
“Listen, Lola, is this why you telephoned? To tell me all over again how we’re not on the same page?”
“Not on the same page?” My voice spiraled upward. “We’re not even reading the same book, Ralph Oliver!”
“Okay. I get it.” A pause. “Why the telephone call?”
“You are the most impossible—”
“You don’t want to compromise, Lola, but you also can’t stay away.”
“Oh, I can stay away, all right,” I said through clenched teeth, and slammed the earpiece in its cradle. I pressed a hand to my hot forehead. That wasn’t the conversation I’d imagined, full of tearful apologies and breathless promises. That, ladies and gentlemen, was a shipwreck.
I pushed out of the study and nearly crashed into Coral, still in last night’s smeared makeup and wrinkled dress.
Had she been eavesdropping?
“Man troubles, sweetie?” she said with a yawn.
“Is there any other kind? Say, you don’t happen to have Isobel Bradford’s address, do you?”
“Isobel? Of course not. I used Rudy’s address book when I sent out the invitations. What do you want her address for?” Coral’s eyes widened, and all of a sudden, she didn’t appear to be hungover in the slightest. “Something about those little gray rocks you and your Swedish pal were playing with in the wee hours?”
“Oh. Yes. More or less.”
“Say, what’s in the sock?”
Phooey. Why hadn’t I stashed that in my handbag? “What’s in the sock? More socks. Dirty ones. Got to dash!” I squeezed past Coral and made tracks for the front door.
* * *
Berta, Cedric, and I ate a substantial lunch at the Red Rooster in Carvington and then set out down the coast. I huddled at the steering wheel, peering between the rhythmically squeaking wipers. My heart ached over my telephone conversation with Ralph. The thing was, my marriage to Alfie had been as agreeable as an electric dental drill. Why was I so eager to give the institution another go? On the other hand, Ralph was infuriatingly blasé about the matter. Almost as though I meant no more to him than the girl before me.
The thought of Ralph’s previous girls (he never spoke of them, but I knew with a sixth sense that there were dozens) turned my hands to chicken talons around the steering wheel. Alfie had had plenty of previous girlfriends, too—not to mention girls on the side during our marriage. Ugh. Men.
We reached Manhattan a bit before three o’clock. I made my way through the splashing, honking traffic toward the Dove White Launderette. My spirits sank lower with every block deeper into Manhattan we went. Ralph could be just around the next corner. I needed to keep away from that so-and-so. Far, far away.
I caught sight of the Empress Josephine Bakery on Ninth Street, swerved to the curb—narrowly missing a taxicab—and braked so hard, Berta grabbed the dashboard.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“Back in a jiffy,” I said, throwing the Duesy into park and opening my door.
I returned a few minutes later with a white cardboard box, nestled it in my lap, and opened the lid.
“You have buttercream on your cheek, Mrs. Woodby.”
“I never buy cakes without sampling them first.”
“You should tell that to Lord Sudley.”
I picked up one of the petits fours from the box and stuffed it into my mouth as I eased back into the traffic.
Ten minutes and six petits fours later, I parked i
n front of the Dove White Launderette in the West Village. Cheery yellow light and soapy steam surged from its open door.
“Allow me to do the talking,” Berta said as she climbed out of the Duesy. “Mrs. Hodges likes me.”
I scooped up Cedric and followed Berta inside the launderette. Electric washing machines clunked and whined. Women in white smocks and caps folded sheets and tablecloths at a long table.
Berta was already in the back, speaking to the plump, red-lipsticked manageress, Mrs. Hodges, who had hired us last week to find and retrieve two missing laundry carts.
“We have a lead,” Berta was telling her. “A rather hot lead.”
“Oh, good,” Mrs. Hodges said. “I thought when I hadn’t heard from you—”
“We must lie low and keep our ears to the ground,” Berta said. “And it has paid off. However, we do require the use of one of your laundry delivery trucks—oh, and we must borrow two uniforms.”
Twenty minutes and three more petits fours after that, Berta parked the borrowed Dove White Launderette truck in the alleyway behind the swanky Scion Club on Fifty-first Street.
“Look,” I whispered. “The service entrance is propped open.”
“Do you intend to bring your dog along?” Berta slid the truck key into her handbag.
In my lap, Cedric swished his plume of a tail.
“I can’t leave him in the truck,” I said. “What if it gets towed?”
Berta heaved a sigh.
We got out of the truck, wearing our borrowed laundress smocks and caps. Berta’s black handbag was slung over her forearm. With Cedric tucked under my own arm like a loaf of pumpernickel, I looked through the service door. It led to a utilitarian tiled hallway. Savory cooking smells coiled out.
“Wait,” Berta said. “We must have a pretense for entering the club.” She hurried back to the truck, opened the back, and returned carrying a stack of white napkins in addition to her black handbag.
I hesitated. “Laundry delivery women wouldn’t carry handbags,” I whispered.
“Nor would they carry toy dogs, Mrs. Woodby. Come along. We do not have much time if we wish to reach Lord Sudley’s bank before it closes.”
We went inside and along the tiled corridor, passing a kitchen where a man in a cook’s hat was stirring something on the stove. He glanced over his shoulder when we entered.
“Linen delivery,” Berta said.
“Down the hall. Linen closet’s on the right.”
Berta and I continued down the corridor. We found the linen closet. Berta dumped the stack of napkins on a shelf, and we kept going.
Once we reached the door at the end of the corridor, the sounds of men’s bawdy laughter, clinking glasses, phonograph crooning, and a rumbling sound I couldn’t identify had grown quite loud. I inched the door open.
Fellows in bespoke suits and loosened ties lounged in the large club room across the entry hall. Smoke wafted, a cocktail shaker rattled, and one fellow with pomaded hair and eyeglasses was dancing with a tiger skin rug. From beyond the staircase came more of that strange rumbling, accompanied by guffaws and hoots.
The Scion wasn’t your Victorian newspaper-and-cigar sort of club.
“Golly, I hope we don’t get caught,” I whispered. “I know some of those men—look, there’s Fizzy Van Hoogenband playing table tennis. They’ll recognize me.”
“Do not take this badly, Mrs. Woodby, but it is unlikely they would recognize you in your disguise.”
I patted my starched cap. “I thought I looked all right.”
“There is an office just over there, beyond the cloakroom—see?—and it appears to contain a good number of filing cabinets. Surely the members’ addresses are kept in there somewhere.”
“All right.” We darted across the entry hall, through the cloakroom, and into the office.
No one was in there, thank goodness.
“Keep watch,” Berta whispered, trundling toward the wall of filing cabinets. “This should not take long.”
“Okay.” I stood guard in the doorway between the office and the cloakroom.
Cedric pricked his ears; the peculiar rumbling sound was growing louder and louder, and then—whoosh! whoosh!—two white canvas carts sailed past the cloakroom door with men riding inside. They crashed into the club’s front door. Hoots and laughter.
Wait. Those were … laundry carts.
I peered out of the cloakroom with one eye. The men were turning around inside the cart, and more men had come over to give them pushes.
The canvas sides of the carts were stenciled with the words DOVE WHITE LAUNDERETTE. The stolen carts!
I hurried back into the office. “Berta!” I whispered, “the launderette’s stolen carts are here!”
Berta was jotting something into her detecting notebook. “I beg your pardon?”
“The club members stole the launderette’s carts. They’re using them as go-carts.”
“Oh, thank heavens,” Berta said, stuffing her notebook into her handbag. “I felt dreadful about lying to poor Mrs. Hodges. We shall tell her we have located the carts and come back to retrieve them later, when we are not in disguise. Oh, and I have procured Isobel Bradford’s Boston address.”
“Peachy. Let’s skate.”
The coast was clear; the laundry cart race had rumbled away for the moment. We’d almost made it to the service corridor door when a steward emerged from, evidently, the wainscoting and cleared his throat. “Laundry deliveries are to be made in the service portions of this establishment only,” he said.
Berta and I froze.
“And—” The steward cast a loathing look at Cedric. “—if I find a single orange hair on the clean linens, I shall terminate all further business with Dove White Launderette.”
I swallowed. “No need to do that, Mr.—?”
“My name is irrelevant.”
“All right, Mr. Irrelevant. Well, you see, the thing is, this dog is actually a sort of a bloodhound—by trade, I mean to say—and he’s come to sniff out two laundry carts that were stolen from the launderette’s delivery truck a few weeks ago. And as you can see, he tracked them down.”
On cue, the laundry cart racers rumbled past.
“I see,” the steward said.
“So we’ll just collect the stolen carts and be on our way.”
The steward pursed his tortoiselike lips.
A few minutes later, Berta and I were pushing the laundry carts up the portable ramp and into the back of the delivery truck. Then, victorious, we were on our way.
9
Once we had returned the delivery truck and the stolen carts to the Dove White Launderette, accepted a cash payment and an invitation to tea the next week from the grateful Mrs. Hodges, changed out of our disguises, taken Cedric for an urgent promenade around the block, given him a bowl of water in the back of the launderette, used the launderette’s washroom, and taken Cedric for another urgent promenade, it was half past four o’clock.
“We’ll have just enough time to nip into Lord Sudley’s bank before it closes, and lock the diamonds in his safe-deposit box,” I said to Berta, motoring slowly on East Twenty-third in search of a parking spot. “After that, we should go directly to the train station and get ourselves to Boston. Here’s the bank, but there is nowhere to park. I could double-park while you go in.”
“No. You are the one who agreed to this farcical plan.”
“Well, then, I’ll double-park and go in while you wait—”
“The problem is, I must—” She coughed. “—spend a penny.”
“Again? In the bank?”
Berta drew herself up. “I do not care to discuss this matter in great detail, Mrs. Woodby.”
I wedged the Duesy mostly into a spot on the other side of the block, and with Cedric leading the way with his tail and tiny chin high, we walked through the drizzle. We had not quite made it to the bank when we spotted the Automat across the street, lit up in the dreary afternoon like the gateway to Paradise.
> “Do you know, I believe I shall pop into the Automat and use their powder room,” Berta said, stopping. “I am certain it is much more welcoming than the bank’s.”
We crossed the hectic street, I scooped up Cedric, and we went in. Berta trundled off to the rear regions of the restaurant. Cedric and I loitered just inside the front door.
In the months since I’d become an impoverished gumshoe, I had discovered the ambrosial delights of Automats. New York City is teeming with them, and no one ever told me! There are no menus, no thumb-twiddling, and no waiters to pass judgment upon the number of desserts one eats, or if one skips the main course entirely and begins with pie. All you must do is go to the ornate walls with signs that read SANDWICHES, PIES, MAIN COURSES, and (yes!) CAKES and filled with little glass-doored compartments, slide your nickels in the slot, open the door of your choice, and—voilà!—time to eat.
Five minutes or so passed and Berta didn’t reappear. I considered going to the bank without her, but decided against it. That might irk her. A quick bite to eat would settle my nerves.
I carried Cedric directly to the CAKES section. I did realize that my cake consumption was beginning to be a problem. I did not agree with Berta that I had a nervous condition, but I was asking a great deal of my dress seams.
However, the Automat was decidedly not the place to worry about seams. I burrowed into my handbag while still holding Cedric, by passing the sockful of diamonds, lipsticks, Milk-Bones, and chocolate bar ends, and found my coin purse.
Then for the selection. Coconut? No. That was Ralph’s favorite, and it was cosmically unfair that I should have him on my mind when he had left me to navigate this cold, wet, miserable November on my own.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. Banana-pecan would do nicely. I slid in my nickel and opened the little glass door, and then my eye fell on a heretofore unnoticed slice of moist, dense-looking chocolate layer cake in another compartment. I hesitated. Then I took the slice of banana-pecan cake—it was wrapped tidily in waxed paper—and attempted to stuff it into my already bursting handbag with the intention of having the chocolate now and the banana-pecan later. I suppose I was squishing Cedric as I tried to stuff the cake, because he squirmed and paddled his paws in the air. My handbag slid off my arm, hit the floor, the cake went tumbling, Cedric took a leap, and—gadzooks!—the sock of diamonds splattered open.