by Maia Chance
“Go to my room?” Josie crossed her arms.
Mr. Egghead made a gurgling sound.
Josie took the gurgle as her cue to scurry away. Just before she shut the double doors and disappeared, she gave me a silent raspberry.
Brat.
“Siddown on the piana bench,” Mr. Egghead said, waving the gun at Berta and me. His movements were a bit slip-sloppy. Not a comforting feature in a fellow who’s holding a five-pound gun.
Berta and I scurried over to the piano bench and plopped down in tandem. There was barely enough room for so much in the way of hips on the bench. Mr. Egghead stuffed his pistol in a pocket, pulled out a ball of twine, and trussed Berta and me together at the shoulders like a couple of chicken drumsticks. “Mr. Van Hoogenband’s real upset ’bout this,” Mr. Egghead said. “He don’t like people bugging his daughter, see. He’s gonna deal with you later, when he’s done with his guests.”
“Ah,” I said.
“How are we going to explain ourselves?” Berta whispered.
“Shuddup!” Mr. Egghead finished tying us. “Now, you stay right there,” he said, and left.
Berta and I waited two beats. Then we both stood up—because Mr. Egghead had tied only our shoulders together—and waddled toward the windows.
I tripped on the carpet and took Berta down with me. We were struggling around like kittens in a sack when a pair of battered wing tips appeared in my line of vision.
“Looks like I missed the three-legged race,” Ralph Oliver said.
“So you’re who I saw skulking around in the garden earlier,” I said. “I should’ve known.”
Ralph disentangled us from the twine and helped us to our feet. The three of us stole outside.
* * *
We ran across the dark lawn, under the trees, and to the gate Berta and I had climbed over earlier. We stopped there, and I doubled over, trying to catch my breath. “What are you doing here?” I asked Ralph.
He stood with his hands in his baggy trousers pockets. He wasn’t even out of breath. Maddening. “Same thing as you.”
“But I’m sure I never mentioned Josie Van Hoogenband at dinner.”
Ralph shrugged. “I’ve got my own sources. Is this the thanks I get for busting you out of there?”
“He has a point, Mrs. Woodby,” Berta said.
“Yes, well,” I muttered. “Thanks.” I still couldn’t understand how Ralph had known to go to Breakerhead. He was hiding something. No surprise.
Ralph boosted Berta up so she could squeeze a boot onto the gate’s crossbar.
“Avert your eyes,” she said to Ralph.
Ralph turned around.
Berta went up and over, and thumped to the ground on the other side.
My turn.
Ralph’s white grin flashed through the darkness. “Need a hand?”
“I’m able to do it myself.”
“Well, sure, but everything’s more fun when there’s two involved.”
I started up the gate. It was not the most graceful of ascents or dismounts, but I did it all by myself. I didn’t even lose a shoe. By the time I’d dusted myself off, Ralph had hopped down next to me.
“Sorry we beat you to Josie,” I said. Ralph was so close, I could smell him, that fresh-air scent with the faintest touch of caveman somewhere in the mix. My body started writing an enthusiastic RSVP to the party.
Ralph grinned in a way that made me suspect he’d somehow gotten the RSVP. “Not to worry, kid. It turns out, it worked out pretty nice for me. I heard everything Poor Little Rich Girl said through the window.”
“You pill.”
“Call it teamwork.”
“We’re not a team.”
“Suit yourself.”
I would say something. I must. “You and I should have a private talk sometime, Mr. Oliver.”
“Oh yeah? About what?”
He was going to pretend he hadn’t well-nigh jilted me? That we were mere colleagues? That last month our kisses hadn’t generated enough electricity to light up the Atlantic Mutual Building?
“Berta, we’re leaving,” I said through clenched teeth.
“It is I who is waiting for you, Mrs. Woodby,” Berta said.
“Hold it,” Ralph said.
Awash with luscious thoughts of apologies and kisses and giant rose bouquets, I gave him my most disdainful look. “Yes?”
“I think this is yours.” Ralph pushed the foil-wrapped nub of Hershey’s bar into my hand. “Maybe I’ll see you two at breakfast. Mrs. Lundgren. Mrs. Woodby.” He merged with the shadows and was gone.
12
I’m not one to get gussied up for brekky. In my former days as a Society Matron, I often took my morning coffee and cinnamon rolls on a tray in bed. More recently, I’d been taking my coffee and cinnamon rolls in pajamas at the kitchen table. However, as any reader of Thrilling Romance well knows, a lady must be well turned out if she wishes her former fellow to be consumed with remorse.
To that end, I managed to wash my bob with a bowl of hot water heated on the galley’s kerosene stove, air out a leaf green cotton dress by hanging it over the yacht boom, and put on my munitions with only a powder compact for a mirror. I was out of lipstick, so I did my best with a dab of cheek rouge on my lips. After that, I was so exhausted, I thought about lying down, but my finger waves weren’t dry yet.
Berta knocked on my cabin door. “Mrs. Woodby? Are you quite ready to go to breakfast? It sounds as though you are wrestling bears in there.”
I swung open the door.
“Goodness,” Berta said. She was impossibly neat in a chintz dress and a smooth bun, even though I thought she’d only just woken up. “Look at you. So very groomed.”
“I merely wish to appear presentable for our visit to Senator Morris’s house this morning—you haven’t forgotten, have you?”
“No, I have not. I lay awake last night wondering how I might demand an advance fee from him when we have not made any progress on the case.”
We disembarked the yacht, Cedric in tow, and walked along the dock. The morning air was salty-fresh and cool. Mist hovered like silk scarves over the water. I almost tripped in my high, bone-colored Perugia T-straps.
Berta clucked her tongue.
“What?” I said crossly.
“If you do not mind me saying so—”
“I probably will.”
“—you, like all prideful women, wish to be adored even when you’re behaving badly. But is that not, perhaps, unfair?”
“Behaving badly? Me?”
“Poor Mr. Oliver looked quite stricken when you told him you were not happy to see him yesterday.”
“He wasn’t stricken! He was as sphinxlike as ever. Stricken. Hah.”
Stricken? Truly?
When we stepped into the Foghorn’s lobby, Ralph was leaning an elbow on the front desk, fedora tipped, chatting with the cute, titian-haired front desk clerkette. The clerkette was all giggles and fluttering eyelashes.
Girls and Ralph? Like flies to honey.
Ralph stopped mid-sentence when he saw me. He murmured something to the clerkette and came over. “I was hoping I’d see you this morning,” he said. His smile was guarded. “Nice dress.”
“Nice hat.”
“Nice shoes.”
“These old things?”
Berta sighed noisily.
Ralph crouched to scratch Cedric, who was skittering around his ankles like a tiny tap dancer. “Actually, I was hanging around to let you know I’m headed to the city. Let’s go outside. More private.”
We went out onto the creaky wraparound porch overlooking Main Street.
“I’m following a tip about Grace’s whereabouts,” Ralph said softly. “I’ll probably be back in the neighborhood at some point to collect my payment from Sophronia Whiddle. I’ll see if you’re still around then.”
“You sound very confident, Mr. Oliver,” Berta said. “It must be a very hot tip indeed.”
“Hope so. You two may have
a hot one, too, with what Josie Van H told you last night about that schoolmistress. The schoolmistress might’ve read all about Grace’s big plans to poison you-know-who in that diary. Could be the key to your case.”
“I know, I know,” I said, “but I’m not sure how to find Miss Cotton. School isn’t in session during the summer.”
“Telephone the school. Maybe there’s someone there, working the office.”
Good idea. “Just a minute,” I said. I dashed inside and went to the lobby call box. I had the telephone exchange girl plug me into Miss Cotton’s Academy on the Upper East Side. The telephone rang ten times and I was just about to disconnect when a fluting woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Is this Miss Cotton’s Academy for Young Ladies?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I am Lola Woodby—née DuFey—an alumna of the school. I must speak with Miss Cotton regarding an urgent matter.”
“Miss Cotton is in the country for the summer.”
“Where?”
“Goodness. I cannot disclose her private address.”
“The matter is pressing.”
“Then telephone the police.” The woman hung up.
I gave the front desk clerkette a nickel. She tossed the nickel in the till and looked me up and down. Why must ladies size each other up as though they were inspecting beef brisket on special at the butcher?
I returned to Ralph and Berta on the porch. “No luck. Miss Cotton has gone to the country for the summer, and the woman on the telephone—a secretary, I suppose—said she can’t disclose her private address.”
“Then I’ll stop by the school first thing when I get to the city and see if talking to her in person is more effective,” Ralph said, “as a special favor to the prettiest detectives on the Eastern seaboard.” He gave me a lingering look that made me shiver like a whippet. I couldn’t help it. I’d tried the cold tap, but now here he was running hot. We had some serious plumbing problems.
“Where’s the school?” Ralph asked.
“East Ninety-first Street, a block and a half from Central Park,” I said. “You can’t miss it. It’s a cross between a French château and a penitentiary.”
“Okay, then.” Ralph was already going down the steps. “I’ll telephone you here in the lobby call box at, say, one o’clock with the address. That should give me enough time.”
“He is very sure of himself,” Berta whispered to me. We watched Ralph climb into his junky Chalmers touring motorcar with its saggy fold-down top.
“I know.” I couldn’t decide if Ralph’s self-assurance was exciting, aggravating, or both.
Ralph reversed out of his spot, braked, and called over the whappety-whappety of the engine, “Say, I almost forgot—you might want to take a look at the newspapers.” The Chalmers rumbled away down the street.
* * *
Several minutes later, Berta and I were settled in a corner booth with piping cups of coffee and all the latest newspapers our waiter could scrounge up. We ordered breakfast and started leafing through.
“See anything?” I asked Berta.
“No. You?”
“No … oh. Yes. Gee.” I’d picked up yesterday’s edition of The New York Evening Observer.
MUFFY MORRIS TEETOTALED! the headline said, followed by, SENATOR’S WIFE IN FOR TIPPLING CURE, OUT ON A STRETCHER.
“By Ida Shanks, no less,” I said.
“Oh my.” Berta poured cream in her coffee. “Miss Shanks is making her way in the world, is she not?”
“Really pulling herself up by the bootstraps.”
Some people have a nemesis; I have Miss Ida Shanks. One part boiled fowl, one part witch, and one part writer for New York’s most muckraking newspaper. Ida and I grew up together in dusty Scragg Springs, Indiana, but while my father made his fortune on Wall Street and I’d married money, Ida had attended a ladies’ college in Illinois and gotten a job as a writer. Strictly on the qt, I admire her gumption. But I loathe her, too, because when she was the Observer’s society columnist, I was her favorite target.
“Chisholm is probably spouting steam,” I said. “This could ruin his business.” I considered. “Wait. No one was supposed to know about that empty rum bottle except Chisholm and the police.”
“And Nurse Beaulah. Recall that she discovered the body.”
“You know, I’ll bet the murderer leaked the news of the rum bottle to the press, to spread the story around that Muffy’s death was due to drink. As a cover, you know. I’ll ring Chisholm up after we eat and ask if he’ll allow me to speak to Nurse Beaulah—I’ll think of some fib. And I suppose I’ll try to ring up Ida Shanks, too.” You may think I would’ve already sprinted for the nearest telephone to ring up Ida Shanks, but the truth is, I knew in my heart that she would never reveal her leak to me. She’s not exactly a Good Samaritan.
The waiter brought my scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast, and I dug in.
Berta ate a few bites of sausage and then said, “I cannot help wondering if it was a mistake to give Miss Van Hoogenband our card.”
My jaws froze mid-chew. “Why?”
“Well, surely she will alert her father to the existence of the card. He will know our address in the city. Perhaps he has even told Senator Morris that we entered his house last night.”
“Senator Morris can’t complain if we were there last night,” I said. “We were only doing our job.”
But … had the Discreet Retrieval Agency bitten off more than it could chew? After all, when we started the agency, we’d sworn not to investigate murders. We’d meant only to be a couple of bounding Labrador retrievers fetching things for people. Murder was different. Murder was sticky.
* * *
Berta and I paid our bill and returned once more to the lobby call box. “This call box is beginning to feel like my summer cottage,” I said to Berta as I slid inside. “And is the front desk clerkette giving me the stink eye?”
“Of course she is giving you the stink eye. Mr. Oliver abandoned her company for yours.”
He had, hadn’t he?
“I shall just take Cedric out for a walk,” Berta said. “He seems agitated.”
“Probably indigestion from all that sausage you slipped him at breakfast.”
Berta and Cedric toddled off.
First I rang up The New York Evening Observer’s offices in the city, but Ida Shanks wasn’t in yet.
Phooey.
Then I telephoned Willow Acres and asked for Chisholm.
“Hello, Lola,” Chisholm said. “I understand that you and Mrs.Lundgren trespassed upon Willow Acres by way of the hedge yesterday afternoon and fled Nurse Astrid and two orderlies?”
“Oh, that? All a misunderstanding.”
“Why are you telephoning? I am very busy.”
“You sound a little hot and bothered, Chisholm. I take it you saw the newspapers?”
“Of course I saw the newspapers. I suppose it was you who leaked that information to the press?”
“Me?”
“You overheard my conversation in the lobby the day before yesterday, in which I mentioned Mrs. Morris’s cure—”
“The leak wasn’t me, Chisholm. We might not be the best of pals, but I’d never leak your secrets to the press. You’re family.”
“This is a scandal, you do realize. If Senator Morris chooses to believe that my staff and I were anything but perfectly tactful about his wife’s health problems—”
“I telephoned to ask a favor,” I said.
Silence. “A favor.”
“The night I stayed at Willow Acres, I thought I lost an earring between the floorboards of my room. I searched for it everywhere, and the night nurse helped me, too. I wished to tell her not to worry, because I found the earring in my shoe.” I cleared my throat. “What was that darling night nurse’s name, again?”
“Meddling again, Lola?”
“What?”
“You are lying. There are no cracks between the floorboards in my establishment.
I do realize that you recently found it gratifying to meddle in a murder investigation, but wishing to do it again makes me fear for your already fragile mental state. There are curative measures you could take for your barren condition, you realize. There have been some recent advances in electroshock—”
“I’m not barren,” I said through gritted teeth. At least, I didn’t think I was barren. By the time Alfie croaked, we hadn’t canoodled for eons. Thank goodness.
“Why don’t you call upon your sister?” Chisholm said. “Lillian will be a bracing influence upon you. She is redecorating Amberley in preparation for our conjugal life there, with the help of Miss Wilbur—you do know Miss Wilbur?”
“Violet Wilbur? Scourge of tacky wallpaper and regrettable rugs? Sure.” I gripped the telephone cord so tightly, my knuckles went white. I already knew about Lillian redecorating what once had been my house, but it still made me feel icky-boo. “Toodles.”
“Good-bye, Lola. And do cut down on your chocolate consumption, mm?”
13
After my chin-wag with Chisholm, I needed a little pick-me-up, so I convinced Berta that we had time to stop in at the Hare’s Hollow five-and-dime before motoring to Senator Morris’s house. After some deliberation I purchased a crimson Delica Kissproof lipstick for ten cents. As soon as we were back in the Duesy, I applied a coat using the rearview mirror.
“Tastes waxy,” I said, popping the cap back on. “I suppose that’s how it’s kiss-proof?”
“That is a very optimistic lipstick, Mrs. Woodby.”
We set off for Senator Morris’s house, stopping at a gas station along the way. With gas at a quarter per gallon and all the driving we were doing, Berta and I needed to crack this case, pronto.
“Another palace,” Berta said as we drove up the Morris house’s front drive.
“You’d never guess that Senator Morris’s family made their bucks in bathroom fixtures, would you?” The place was a brick Georgian colonial: thick ivy, tall windows, white pillars, lots of marble figures in their birthday suits. I parked in the shade since I figured it would be unprofessional to take Cedric inside. I left the Duesy’s windows open, and Berta and I went to the front door. I rang the doorbell. No answer.