by Maia Chance
“Then why did you lead me to believe Ralph and you were, you know—”
“Just yanking your chain, lady. You shouldn’t make it so easy.”
Was it possible? Ralph was innocent of any kind of Jack the Lad indiscretions and I hadn’t given him a chance to explain and now it was … curtains?
We’d walked all the way across the bridge, but no one had shot Berta and me or shoved us into the river. Then I saw the huge wooden boxy things lying on the ground. Van Hoogenband had said, The concrete supports are scheduled to be poured in the morning.
“All right, girls,” Baby Doll said, waving her gun at the boxy things. “Upsy-daisy. Climb in.”
“In there?” Berta said. “Good heavens, no. Why would we do such a thing?”
Since my throat was sticking to itself, I let Baby Doll do the explaining.
“Didn’t you hear what Boss said? We’re puttin’ your bodies in them things since the concrete boys are coming in tomorrow to pour the supports.”
Berta frowned. “Supports?”
“For the bridge,” Baby Doll said with an impatient sigh. “Once the concrete dries, they put ’em in the water. That’s what holds up all those steel thingums.”
“And you mean for our bodies to be encased inside those blocks like the jelly inside of a doughnut?” Berta asked in an affronted tone.
“That’s the plan.”
“It is revolting!”
“I don’t make the rules. Now, hop in. Let’s make this short and sweet.”
Berta and I looked at each other. The gush of the river seemed to crescendo.
Again, Berta made a tiny nod. I made a tiny nod back. I wasn’t sure what we were about to do, but we were about to do something.
I said to Baby Doll, “By the way, since I probably won’t have another chance to tell you this—I simply adore your shoes.”
“Thanks, honey. Splurged on ’em at Wright’s just the other day.” Baby Doll shifted her weight from side to side and rotated her ankles so we could admire the shape of her shoes in the moonlight.
“Oh no!” I said. “Did you—? Why, Miss Mallone, it looks like you’ve dinged up the heel of your shoe. Did you get it caught in a subway grate?”
“Are you kidding me? I always louse up my new shoes!” Baby Doll twisted to peer at her heel.
I shoved her. She went down as easy as an underfed duckling. Her pistol bounced out of her hands and I dived for it. The feel of that cold metal in my fingers was sheer bliss. I barely felt the pang of my skinned knees, and I didn’t care that Thrilling Romance had fallen out of my pocket.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of Berta pulling her .25-caliber Colt from her handbag.
“You dumb broad!” Baby Doll screamed, snatching at my ankles.
I staggered to my feet and away from her.
Berta aimed her Colt at Eggie’s chest. He didn’t look especially concerned, considering that his pistol was pointed at her chest. And his pistol was quite a bit bigger.
Baby Doll was crawling toward me.
Eggie’s eyes lit up. “Hey. What’s that? That the new issue?” He waved his gun at Thrilling Romance, its pages fluttering in the breeze.
I darted over and snatched it up. “Why, yes,” I said. “Yes, it is. Hot off the press. You’re dying to know what happens in ‘Hello, Darling,’ aren’t you? Well, it’s like this: Thelma gets caught in a rainstorm in an abandoned cottage across Big Trout Lake—”
“Shaddup!” Eggie bellowed.
“—and Bill Hampton—he was in an awful rage at Maude—went and found Thelma and—get this, he kissed Thelma—”
“NO!” Eggie howled, covering his ears with both hands. His pistol dangled from one finger.
Berta wound up and smacked Eggie’s noggin with her handbag. He staggered sideways, and his pistol sailed into the river. He stared blankly after it.
“Let’s tie them up,” I said to Berta. “Keep your gun on Eggie. Here, Eggie, read this.” I tossed him Thrilling Romance. Then I kicked off my shoes, unclipped my stockings, and rolled them down with one hand, keeping an eye on Baby Doll all the while. Baby Doll glared, but she didn’t try to take off. How could she in those shoes? I used one stocking to bind her wrists behind her back and the other to bind her ankles out in front.
“Ow!” Baby Doll yelled.
Next, Berta disappeared into the shadows, leaving me with the gun trained on Eggie.
He was thumbing through Thrilling Romance, squinting to make out the print in the dark. “I just hate that Thelma,” he said. “She’s a sneaky little number, but Maude’s sure got a problem always going after them baddies.”
“Is Bill Hampton a baddie?” I asked.
Eggie shook his head. “You dames never can see ’em coming.”
Berta emerged with her wool stockings draped over her arm. Together we tied Eggie’s ankles and bound his huge wrists. He managed to keep hold of the magazine the whole time.
“The motorcar key,” Berta said.
“Good thinking, Watson,” I said.
“Sherlock, if you do not mind.”
“Where’s the key, Eggie?”
“Trouser pocket.”
I dug it out and slid it into my brassiere for safekeeping.
“The concrete men will find you tomorrow,” I said to them.
“Boss is gonna kill you!” Baby Doll shrieked. “And I’m gonna be a mess for my date tomorrow!”
“Ready?” I asked Berta.
“Ready.”
We set off over the bridge. I stopped and called over my shoulder, “I wasn’t lying when I said I adore your shoes!”
“Go to hell!” Baby Doll yelled back.
We made it to the motorcar and piled in.
I was so jittery, I crashed the front and then the rear fender into trees while getting turned around on the dirt track, but soon we were out on the main road.
“Where are we?” I said. “There’s nothing but forest.”
Berta was rummaging in the glove box. “Keep driving until we see a sign. Ah. Here is a road map of New York State—do you suppose we are still in New York State?”
“No idea.”
I kept driving although I had to blink hard to keep my eyes focused. It couldn’t be past midnight, but some sort of post-fright lethargy was oozing over me.
Presently we came to a small town with a sign reading WELCOME TO PERRYTOWN, POP. 1,672. Berta located Perrytown on the map—we were up the Hudson Valley. We found the highway and set off toward the south.
26
We arrived back in the city at around two o’clock in the morning. My eyelids felt like they had sand stuck under them. Berta was dying to use the bathroom, but she insisted she could wait until we got back to our apartment. I suggested that we park the Chevrolet across the street from the Van Hoogenband mansion.
“It is sheer madness to return to that villain’s house,” Berta said. “Besides which, Mr. Van Hoogenband probably has a dozen motorcars, if this is due to a misplaced sense of—”
“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just, well—what if those concrete-pouring fellows don’t show up? Baby Doll and Eggie could get pneumonia or get eaten by wild animals and I couldn’t sleep at night with their blood on my hands.”
Berta heaved an annoyed sigh. I took it as a yes.
The Van Hoogenband mansion was dark. We parked his Chevrolet across the street, left the key in the glove box, and legged it to Fifth Avenue, where we flagged down a taxicab.
Our second-floor windows were lit up when we arrived at Longfellow Street. Someone—yes, Ralph—leaned out an open window. “Thank God you’re all right!” he called.
Something unfamiliar bubbled up in my chest at the sight of him. Something warm and skittish and joyful …
I was in love with Ralph.
With Ralph, who wasn’t a Jack the Lad but a horribly misunderstood, gallant darling who thought I had a warm heart and a knockout figure.
Berta paid the cabbie with a h
andful of change. He muttered something unkind under his breath and chugged away.
Upstairs, Ralph let us in. His hair tufted and his eyes were bleary. “I’ve been worried sick about you two,” he said. “Sorry I had to pick the lock. When I arrived, Grace Whiddle was sound asleep.” He passed me the wiggling, whining Cedric, and I buried my nose in his fragrant fluff. I blinked back tears.
Berta rushed off to the bathroom.
“Where’s Grace?” I asked Ralph, feeling shy all of a sudden.
“Left with her mother hours ago.”
“Rats!” Berta and I had missed our chance to thoroughly question Grace about the murders.
“I stuck around because it seemed funny that you and Mrs. Lundgren left Grace and Cedric alone,” Ralph said. “Oh—Mrs. Whiddle cut me a check for finding Grace.”
“She cut you a check?”
“Don’t worry. I’m signing over the whole kit and caboodle to you and Mrs. Lundgren.”
You see? He was such a gentleman. “Is that why you’re here?” I asked, pulling off my dirt-caked shoes. “Sophronia Whiddle telephoned and told you we’d caught Grace?”
“That’s right. Say, you haven’t told me where you’ve been, and judging by the smudges on your cheeks and the way that muscle under your eye is twitching, I can tell it wasn’t to take in a musical comedy. Hold still.” Ralph picked something out of my hair. A pine needle. “Well?”
I longed to tell Ralph how I felt about him, how I’d been childish and blind, to twine my arms around his neck—
“You all right, kid?” Ralph asked. “You look a little dizzy. Need to sit down?”
“No—yes.” I turned and walked toward the sitting room sofa.
“Whew, kid, your whole caboose is just covered with dirt,” Ralph said behind me. “What’ve you been doing? Tobogganing without a toboggan?”
“What?” I twisted around. Ugh. My bottom looked like a mud pie. I sat quickly on the sofa to hide it, Cedric on my lap.
“Could I fix you a drink?” Ralph asked.
“No booze in the house.”
“Teetotaling?”
“Hah. Broke.”
“Tell me what happened.” Ralph sat down next to me. He picked a twig off my sleeve. “What’s next? A whole family of badgers crawling out of your brassiere?”
My heart was brimming and Ralph glowed like a ginger-headed god to me, but I knew he wouldn’t let up until he had answers. So in a rush I explained how Baby Doll and Eggie had kidnapped us and taken us to Van Hoogenband’s mansion in the city, how he thought we had Grace Whiddle’s diary, and how, when he realized we didn’t have the diary but still believed we knew what was written in it—thanks to me and my big mouth—he ordered his thugs to take us out to a bridge site in the middle of nowhere and murder us. “Obviously, we got away.” I petted Cedric to hide the way my hands shook. “Baby Doll and Eggie are still out there, I suppose.”
“A bridge site?” Ralph said.
“Yes. Why do you look so excited about a bridge site?”
“And you say Van H did all this because of what’s written in Grace Whiddle’s diary?”
“Yes.”
“The diary!” Ralph was on his feet and pacing. I’d never seen him so agitated before. “Well, then, there’s nothing doing. I’ve got to get my hands on that diary.”
I stared at him. “Mind telling me why? Because the last thing I knew, you were only trying to find Grace. For her mother. What do you want with her diary?”
Ralph looked at me like he’d forgotten I was in the room. “Where exactly did Van H’s goons take you, by the way?”
“It was about five miles outside of a town called Perrytown up in the Hudson Valley—but you haven’t answered my question. Hold it. You’re investigating Van Hoogenband, aren’t you? That’s why you were slinking around at Breakerhead the other night. You lied to me!”
Ralph sat down again and took my hand in his big, warm, rough one. “Listen to me, kid, and listen hard. I’ll never lie to you, and I never have. If there’s something I can’t tell you, I simply decline to comment.”
“Does that make it better? Is ‘declining to comment’ different than lying?”
“That’s the best I can do.”
“Why are you investigating Van Hoogenband?”
“It probably doesn’t have any bearing on your investigation.”
“Tell me.”
Ralph sighed. “All right. Long story short, it looks like Van H may have been bribing people he shouldn’t have. I’ve been hired to get the goods on him. If he’s so hot and bothered about Grace’s diary, well, I’m thinking that diary may contain the evidence I need to clinch my investigation. If only I’d known he wants the diary earlier this evening when I had a chance to talk to Grace.”
“Who are you working for?”
“I have to decline to comment on that one, sweetheart.”
Okay. That was annoying. But my heart was still brimming—if a little less than before—and Ralph still looked like a ginger-headed, well, demigod. This was the Magic Moment, our hands clasped, our eyes locked. “Ralph. Listen to me. I’ve got to get something off my chest.…” My voice trailed off.
Ralph was not gazing poignantly into my eyes; he was inspecting a gaping-split seam in the side of the borrowed gingham dress. My sad, wrinkly gray underpants were so exposed, they may as well have been flying on a flagpole.
I grabbed a sofa cushion and hid myself, blushing hotly. Hadn’t Ralph seen the yearning in my eyes or heard the winsome catch of my breath? Jeez.
“You did have a rough time of it, didn’t you?” Ralph said in a bemused voice. “That dress of yours is so kaput, you’re lucky you weren’t driving all the way back to New York City in nothing but your skivvies. Why’s that dress so tight? Now, what was it you were saying to me? Something you need to get off your chest?”
“Off my chest? No. Nope. I said I need some rest. This has been the longest day of my life; I’m so bushed, I’ll fall asleep if I blink too long; and unfortunately, at night this sofa serves as my bed.” I cleared my throat.
“Course.” Ralph stood, looking a little confused. “As soon as you and Mrs. Lundgren are finished with the bathroom, I’ll sleep in the tub, all right? You two might sleep more soundly knowing there’s a man in the place.”
“Fine.”
I slept on the sofa behind a folding screen with my face mashed between Cedric and a cushion. Cedric’s belly gurgled all night. It’s funny, but those gurgles were comforting. Amid all that anxiety and uncertainty in that apartment that wasn’t really mine, they were the sound of home.
I was conscious of Ralph’s presence in the apartment, too. Not that he snored or anything. It was more like there was a constant hum of humiliation in the back of my mind. Because maybe Ralph did think, as Baby Doll had said, that I was warmhearted and the proud owner of a knockout figure. But we certainly weren’t on the same page romance-wise. I might’ve jumped to the juicy parts in the middle of the book, but Ralph had stuck the bookmark in Chapter Two.
It could’ve been worse. I could’ve told him how I felt.
27
When I woke in the morning, stuffy heat had already seeped into the apartment. I lay still for a minute or two, disoriented. Wait. Van Hoogenband. The bridge. That horrible black roiling water … I bolted upright, panting for breath.
Berta and Ralph’s voices wafted from the kitchen along with the aromas of coffee and bacon. I got up, folded my sheets, and stowed them in the foyer closet. Then I washed, did my hair and makeup in the bathroom, stuck fresh plasters on my skinned knees, changed into a pink silk dress with a boat neck, a dropped waist, and plenty of wiggle room—no more split seams for me, thanks—and went into the kitchen.
“Good morning,” I said.
Cedric’s tail whapped on the floor.
“Morning, Lola,” Ralph said, drinking coffee at the table. Hair slicked and fully dressed, he looked too good to have slept in a bathtub. True, his jaw glinted with g
old stubble, but as far as I was concerned, that was the icing on the cake of his handsomeness.
Darn him.
“How are you, Berta?” I asked. Although her bun was perfect and her dress looked crisp, wrinkles creased her forehead. Berta never looked wrinkly. Last night’s kidnapping had taken its toll.
“Well, it would feel rather nice not to wonder if thugs were about to burst in at any second,” she said, standing at the stove and poking at frying bacon with a fork.
“Van Hoogenband doesn’t know our exact address, because of that blotch of mascara on the card.” I sat. “He said we have a lair.”
“He did?” The corner of Ralph’s mouth twitched.
“But we do not have a lair, do we?” Berta said. “It is merely a stroke of luck that he has not been able to find us here. Do not forget that we were kidnapped on this very street last night.”
A chill slithered down my back despite the warmth. Berta was right. Someone could be watching our apartment now.
“Look at the front page,” Berta said, tapping the newspaper on the table.
I looked.
FOREIGN ANARCHIST ASSASSINATES SENATOR!
Berta passed me a cup of coffee. Her lips were grim. “Mr. Ulf will never get a fair trial. We must act.”
I skimmed the article. A spent Luger Parabellum cartridge had been found near the boardwalk stage. This was the same pistol widely used in the German army, and Tibor Ulf admitted that his sons had served in the German army during the Great War.
I tried to sip my coffee and spilled it. Brown droplets sank into the newsprint. “This is awful,” I said. “What should we do?”
“Locate the true murderer, Beaulah Starr, of course,” Berta said. She cleared her throat. “By the by, I made it to the sixth page.”
“What do you mean, you made it?” I flipped to page six. “Oh.”
In a small photograph, Berta posed, hands on hips, in her black woolen bathing suit. The caption read, Bathing beauty Mrs. Lundgren, head detective of the Discreet Retrieval Agency and oldest pageant contestant.