1 No Game for a Dame

by M. Ruth Myers

  The merry-go-round in my head began to return. Whisps of scenes, real or imagined, bobbled in and out. Did I remember voices? Struggling as a cloth was pressed to my nose for a second time?

  Focus. Why would Woody Beale go to this much trouble to warn me off? He wouldn’t swat at gnats. Either I had something that jeopardized him and his operations or he thought I did.

  I zig-zagged a few streets over in hopes of spotting a Gamewell box. My passing caused a dog somewhere to start sounding a shrill, high-pitched warning. Unlike the deep bay of the farm dogs it pierced my already aching head. Something about the sound caused a memory to flirt and vanish as I tried to retrieve it. As the dog continued his frenzy I stood hoping a light would go on, a door open. Nothing happened. Whoever lived with the vile little mutt must be stone deaf.

  As I started on, the memory that had been teasing me dropped into place. Spinning drunkenly I looked back the way I had come. There. A few houses down. It was too far away for my flashlight beam, but on either side of a porch I could see the pyramid shapes of two spruce trees. With all the speed exhaustion allowed I returned to the corner where I could make out a dark, spreading mass that spring before last had been an explosion of yellow forsythia. It had made a swell, half-hidden place to wait in the car I’d had at the time as I tailed a guy who turned out to be an embezzler. In the half a dozen times I’d sat there I’d often had to endure the tantrums of that yappy dog.

  An imposing Victorian house just beyond where I stood was the one I’d been watching back then. I opened the gate in an iron fence and went up the walk on unsteady legs.

  Like its neighbors, the house was dark, or appeared to be from the street. But along the edge of one handsome front window a line of light no wider than a hatpin was barely visible around tightly drawn draperies. The fabric must be thick. Maybe velvet. Maybe I’d get to see.

  On legs as bendable as a Slinky, I climbed the steps and for the first time in my life rang the bell at a cathouse.

  Fifteen

  No porch light went on, but after a minute I thought I heard a whisper of sound. I was leaning hard on the door frame, supporting myself by one arm. The door opened.

  I expected a hard looking dame in too much rouge and a tight dress. Instead I found myself looking up at a tallish man in an honest-to-God butler’s outfit.

  “I’m not here to make trouble,” I said before he could speak. “I got chloroformed and dumped in a ditch somewhere out in the country. I need to use your phone to call a cab.”

  “I’m sorry. My employer is out for the night.”

  I tried to stick my foot in the door, but he’d seen the move before. Deflecting it with a tight, quick kick that almost sent me sprawling, he closed the door. For several seconds I clung to the frame. Hard to tell if my muscles were shivering or going to rubber. Before I could summon enough strength to think, the door opened again, this time to reveal not a gaudy madam but an impeccably coiffed and turned out middle-aged socialite.

  Her gaze swept over me, as penetrating as a nun’s.

  “Go to the side door,” she said. The one between us clicked shut.

  Processing thoughts was becoming an effort, but my eyes made out a narrow walk for tradesmen. It hugged one side of the house and was five or six feet from the driveway. Dredging up the last of my strength I followed the walk to a door near the back. Before I could knock the door opened. I peered wearily into the face of the woman I’d seen at the front. I think she took my arm. Maybe I floated along on the warmth of the place. I ended up in a chair at an oversized table and realized I was in the kitchen. My coat slid off and something warm settled around my shoulders. A mulatto girl wearing a starched white apron over a black dress brought a cup of steaming tea and set it in front of me.

  “Drink up,” said the socialite.

  Except I knew she really wasn’t a socialite in spite of the gleaming copper hair done up in a twist and the clusters of garnets winking on her ears and the rope of garnets knotted around her neck like she was headed to dinner at Hawthorne Hill. Inside, this house was alive with voices. Men and women. Laughing and spirited. Not the anemic chat of society parties. My memory hadn’t played tricks. I was sitting in the kitchen of a cathouse and unless I missed my guess, the madam herself had just let me in.

  “Drink up,” she said again.

  I thought of Woody Beale and the web of contacts he probably had. I hesitated.

  The madam noticed. Annoyance started to shade her face. All at once her head darted down, close enough to kiss me. Straightening, she glanced at the other end of the table where a goodly amount of polished silver lay on a towel. She seized a gravy ladle, dipped it into my cup and swallowed its contents.

  “Guess I’d be cautious too if I’d been chloroformed. You reek of it.”

  Feeling foolish, I raised the cup and swallowed greedily. I was shaking so I could hardly keep the cup to my lips

  “You looking to be taken in?” the madam asked. “Work for me?”

  Her voice was crisp, authoritative – and surprisingly cultured. Startled by her question I shook my head. A lift of her finger brought the girl in the white apron to refill my cup.

  “Leave it,” she said indicating the teapot.

  With a curtsy the girl scurried back to the sink. The madam sat down in the chair facing mine. Her russet silk dress showed a fine pair of shoulders and a throat betraying no hint of age. A pair of shrewd hazel eyes examined me. Leaning forward she gave her knuckles a sharp rap on the table, demanding truth.

  “Why did you come to this particular house? We’re as dark as all the others on the street; no noise, nothing to call attention.”

  Fumbling in my jacket pocket produced one of my business cards, which I slid toward her. Anger tightened her face as she read.

  “Spring before last I was following a guy who turned out to be an embezzler,” I said. “He liked your place–”

  “That little s.o.b. I had to let one of my best girls go for giving him a free romp. I guess you could say he embezzled here too. But sugar lump, I wasn’t born yesterday. You want me to swallow some story that you remembered my address after a year and a half? Or maybe recognized my house in the dark?”

  “It was a dog,” I said weakly. “That little yappy one. He used to drive me nuts. I heard him tonight and it made me remember and then things looked familiar.... Look. I don’t care what you do here. I just want to call a cab. I have money for the fare –”

  She held up a hand. I shut up. She wasn’t looking quite so angry.

  “I wish to Christ someone would shoot that mutt,” she said darkly. “You need more warmth inside you before you’re fit for a cab. If you start to be sick, try and make it to the convenience there.” She pointed to a small room next to the pantry. “I’m Mrs. Salmon if you didn’t know that. Now let me take a look at your noggin. I’ve seen a few cracked heads in my time.”

  “My head?”

  One of the will-o-the-wisps that had fluttered inside it while I was walking started to jell into memory. I’d been roused by voices. Started to struggle. A hand with a cotton pad had darted toward me. I’d fought harder, felt a blow....

  Mrs. Salmon pushed away my hand as I raised it. She probed gently. She had the maid bring her a warm cloth and wiped, while I uttered several words I was glad to think she’d heard before.

  “I’ve seen worse, but it’s nasty enough,” she said at length and sat down again. “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday depending which side of midnight we’re on.” I was too tired to look at my watch, but my starch was returning.

  “Half after. You have any idea who it was who gave you that lump?”

  “My guess is someone working for Woody Beale.”

  I wanted to see if the name would make her react. It did. She leaned back slowly and patted her fingertips on the table.

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Good thing. The guy’s nutsy.”

  “He go
t wind of something I’m working on and he’s been trying to scare me off.”

  She nodded without comment.

  “What did you mean about him being nuts?” I asked.

  Her gaze dropped to my business card, which still lay where she’d dropped it. She picked it up and thumbed one corner. Deciding.

  “He came here half a dozen times, back when he was legging for Tuffy Langstrom. I threw him out.”

  “Why?”

  “Second time he visited he started giving orders like he owned the place – and him just a punk with money, hardly dry behind the ears. Then one night upstairs he went nutsy; started shooting. I don’t allow guns. When gentlemen arrive, they go into my study and Winston asks them to take off their jacket. If they have a firearm, Winston locks it in the safe. He gives it back when they’re ready to leave.

  “That bastard Beale always gave his over okay. Trouble is, he had another little one strapped to his ankle. The girl who entertained him should have told me.” Her mouth hardened at the memory. “Apparently he’s terrified of rats – goes crazy if he sees one. One of the girls had a little gray kitten. He saw something gray scuttle out and blasted away. I threw him out and his pants after. Told him if he ever came back, he’d be singing soprano.”

  She gave my card another flick with her thumb as she studied me. “Can anyone with cash in the bank hire you?”

  “You could, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  She tapped the card on the table and got up. “You never know.” All at once she smiled. “My chauffeur will take you home when you’re ready. I’ll send him in.”

  Sixteen

  Mrs. Z. locked her door at 11:30. Any girl who hadn’t come home by then was out for the night, and come morning would be hunting somewhere else to rent a room. Luckily Mrs. Z. understood my work sometimes required me to bend that rule. It didn’t happen often, but that night it had, so I threw some pebbles at her bedroom window and she let me in, the way we’d worked out.

  Once she saw how I looked and I’d mumbled a half-truth about my car getting run off the road and hitting my head, she insisted on helping me up the stairs to my room. I collapsed on my bed fully clothed, though I had the vague recollection of someone at some point helping me into my nightie. The ache in my head, or maybe the after-effects of the chloroform, interrupted my sleep with dreams of gangsters shining lights in my eyes and someone asking my name. Then, like the heavy velvet draperies at Mrs. Salmon’s house, sleep blotted out everything.

  When I finally woke there was daylight. The silence in the hallway, more than the sun streaming in, told me I’d slept past the time I usually set on my Big Ben. The other girls had all left for work. I rolled over to look at the clock and a landslide in my head brought back what had happened. It was half-past ten. Someone was tapping at my door.

  “Are you awake yet?” Genevieve poked a mop of curls the color of hickory nuts around the door. My scowl brought a smile to her face. “Oh, good. You’re feeling well enough to be a pill. You must be okay.”

  She came in as she said it, setting a tray on a straight-backed chair beside my bed. “Mrs. Z. let me make you some tea and toast. Can you sit up?”

  I didn’t have much choice. She was already lifting my shoulder, sliding my extra pillow behind me and fluffing the one I’d slept on so they made a backrest. Ginny probably fell a few years shy of being old enough to be my mother but we’d hit it off from the day we met. She had the room next to mine and income from somewhere so she didn’t go out to a job. She was the only one at the rooming house I’d have let fuss over me like this.

  “Thanks,” I croaked as she set the tray on my knees. My throat felt like it needed oiling.

  “You had the heaves the first time I checked on you, so I didn’t butter the toast. Better safe than sorry.”

  I took two or three swigs of tea and squinted at her. “You come in with a flashlight? Ask my name?”

  Her squarish face turned somber as she nodded. “When you get a hard bang on the head it can make your brain swell. Doctors tell you to wake the person, make sure they’re just sleeping.”

  I wondered how she knew, but I don’t press Ginny about her past just as she doesn’t press me about my work. It’s why we’re friends. While I drank the tea and tried to keep from gobbling the toast I told her highlights of what had happened. She laid out clean underwear and my robe and helped me down the hall to the bathroom. While the tub filled she went to call Eli at the garage and convey my request for him and Calvin to get my car. They’d have to find it first, but at least I’d been able to tell them the general direction.

  A soak in hot water made most of my body feel better. A couple of aspirin gave encouragement of better days for my head. I put on my tan flannel suit, with a soft sweater instead of a blouse, and let Ginny mother hen me onto the trolley. I wasn’t ready for a footrace, but at least I wasn’t wobbly. When I got off downtown I turned into the first diner I passed and drank a mug of coffee so hot it scalded the back of my throat. It left me perkier, and too mad for a refill. I had things to do.

  * * *

  Chances were good the flowers that arrived for me hadn’t come from the barkeeper at the Ace of Clubs. They were tea roses, pink ones, spilling over the sides of a china basket. Some greenery kept them company and a florist’s card peeped from the arrangement. A kid in his teens with a big Adam’s apple was turning away from my door with it as I got off the elevator.

  “This your place?” he asked as he saw me coming in his direction.

  An inner alarm that had been on the fritz the day before began to sound. I stopped a few yards shy of reaching him. “Who sent you?”

  He stared at me, edgy. “What do you mean?”

  “What shop do you work for?”

  “Meadows. Meadows’ Flowers. Up on Main. ‘Freshest flowers in the Miami Valley’,” he recited, puffing his chest out. “Harold says half of that’s fast delivery. He chews me out good if he has to drive around the block more than once. So can you take ‘em, please?”

  It sounded like stuff a boss drilled into employees. I took the roses, unlocked my office and cleared a corner of my desk for them.. The whole place looked classier.

  In the time it took me to hang up my coat, I ran through a short list of who could have sent them. The architect I’d dated for a couple of months in the spring until we’d argued over something I couldn’t remember. Some satisfied client who found himself in a new jam. It was even possible Mick Connelly was trying to make amends for his cocky comment about my freckles. I doubted it, given what I’d seen of him. Not on a cop’s salary. In any case, I wasn’t interested.

  I snipped the ribbon that tied the envelope to one of the rose stems. Inside was a plain white card with a raised border.

  Don’t take a turn for the worse.

  Neat penmanship. No signature.

  I stared at it for a minute, then ripped it in half and hurled it into the trash. A warning, that’s what it was. A smug, victorious jab from Woody Beale flaunting his cleverness and rubbing my nose in his power to do worse. But I couldn’t prove he was the one behind my abduction. If I went to the cops about it, the only thing likely to happen was Billy and Seamus would learn I’d been roughed up and start fussing over me. The flowers’ taunt set my head off again, which made me so furious I didn’t immediately register the tap at my door.

  When I did, my hand shot to the sling beneath my chair where I kept my .38. The flowers and the previous night’s events had turned me into such a hen brain that I’d left the door ajar. But even as my fingers reached for the gun I recognized Evelyn from the sock place down the hall.

  “May I interrupt?” she called, making sure I wasn’t with a client.

  I wasn’t keen to see anyone, but she was a nice girl.

  “Sure,” I said. “Come on in.”

  She glanced around her, taking in my office for the first time. “No holes in the wall.” A small smile played at her mouth. “I’m a bit surprised after that ruckus
.” She had a slip of paper in one hand. “I thought you should know – Oh, my!” She’d noticed the roses. “Aren’t they lovely! Either you have an admirer or I work in the wrong office.”

  I waved at them in dismissal. Becoming businesslike she pried her eyes away and cleared her throat.

  “Well, anyway. I thought you might like to know someone followed you yesterday when you left for the day. I’d picked up some office supplies Maxine ordered so I wouldn’t have to catch an earlier trolley to do it this morning. I was bringing them back when I saw you dash up the street and get into your car. Just as you whizzed past me another car pulled away from the curb, so fast he almost hit an old woman. Not that he stopped.”

  “What kind of car?”

  She sighed. “My husband despairs that I can’t tell one from another. It was smallish, navy, quite ordinary looking, I’m afraid. The only thing I can tell you about it is the license number.” With that she handed me the slip of paper.

  My mouth opened several seconds before I managed words. “You got the license number? You’re a gem!”

  Evelyn looked embarrassed. “Well I work with numbers all day. My brain sees five or six of them as a unit, I suppose. It’s just easier that way, don’t you think? Besides, I only had to remember it long enough to get upstairs and write it down.”

  Evelyn and I were definitely in different leagues when it came to numbers. “Thanks,” I said. “For telling me and for being so fast on your feet.”

  She looked pleased at the compliment. “I have to get back. I told Maxine I was going to powder my nose.”

  “Hey.” Beale wouldn’t send anyone up to check on the flowers. There’d be no harm. I stuck the number she’d given me under my blotter and grabbed the china basket of roses. “Take these. I don’t think much of the guy who sent them, so why don’t you enjoy them?”