Teetotaled

by Maia Chance

  In the front-facing room upstairs, Ralph unlatched the balcony windows and we went out. Ralph climbed easily over the thigh-high railings and onto Violet’s balcony, and then lent me a hand over. Only when I was safe on Violet’s balcony did I dare look down. No gawking passersby. No moving men shaking fists. Only Berta and Cedric watching us from the Duesy.

  I wondered if Berta was impressed by my lithe cat burglar abilities.

  “Violet’s window is open, thanks to this heat,” Ralph said in low tones, “so all we’ve got to do is, nice and easy, take a peek in the—Lola!”

  I blatted like a baby elephant as I tumbled through the window in a tangle of curtains. I landed in a heap on the floor.

  Ralph stepped silently inside and helped untangle me from the curtains. “You okay, kid?” he whispered.

  “Never been better.” I wiggled my shoe back on and stood. We were in a bedroom that was only dimly lit because all the curtains were drawn. The door was shut.

  “Good thing no one’s in here,” Ralph whispered. “I myself generally like to do a little recon before I go barging into a place. Just in case.”

  “Well, I don’t,” I whispered back, although naturally, I hadn’t meant to fall through the window. I’d lost my balance in my tippy T-straps. “And let me make something clear, Ralph: This is my investigation, not yours, so I’m in charge. No muscling in.”

  “You got it.” Ralph sauntered away. “Well, well. Lookee here.” He picked up a bottle from the night table and tipped it upside down. “French champagne, and not a drop left.”

  “Two champagne glasses. And the bed’s a mess.” My cheeks grew warm when I saw slithery mauve garments tangled in the sheets.

  “Somebody had some fun last night,” Ralph said. “No doubt about it, there’s a boyfriend in the picture.”

  Yes. But who?

  As I was scanning the items on Violet’s vanity table—kohl and lipsticks and French perfume, all brand-new—footsteps sounded overhead.

  “Someone’s walking around on the third floor,” Ralph whispered.

  “The maid?” I tipped my head. “Scratch that. Listen. I hear dishes clattering downstairs. The maid is in the kitchen. That is Violet’s gentleman walking around up there.” I headed for the door.

  Ralph caught up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you nuts?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “This could be dangerous.”

  “I know how to handle men.” I shrugged Ralph’s hand off my shoulder.

  “I won’t argue that point with you, kid.”

  “Good.” I didn’t actually have a plan, but geewhillikins, I wasn’t about to tell Ralph he was correct. I sashayed out the door, down the hall, and tiptoed up the carpeted stairs to the third story. Ralph was right behind me. We looked through an open door.

  Tall south-facing windows flooded the spacious room with light. Easels displayed paintings in progress. A table held brushes, cloths, smeary palettes, and crunched metal tubes of oil paint. A man in a seersucker suit and a boater hat was stuffing some of the painting supplies into a leather satchel. He hummed in a reedy tenor as he worked.

  “Golly. It’s Gil Morris,” I whispered almost inaudibly to Ralph, who hadn’t to my knowledge met Gil before. “I must speak with him.”

  “How are you going to make him talk?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The Friend and Foe tactic?”

  “Where’d you learn about that?”

  “From a book.” A trashy dime novel, to be exact. In this tactic, one policeman acted nasty toward their subject, and the other acted sympathetic. According to Thad Parker, hero of my favorite series, it was a crackerjack strategy for getting villains to yap. “I’ll be the Foe.”

  Gil spun around, crying, “Who’s there?” His eyes bulged when he saw Ralph and me in the doorway. “What on earth—?”

  I strolled into the room. “Well, well, well. Mr. Morris. What, no mourning attire? I’d have thought you’d be in head-to-toe black after losing both of your parents in such quick succession. It’s almost as though you’re pleased they’re toast.”

  “I am pleased.” Gil eyed Ralph. “Who are you?”

  “Ralph Oliver, private detective.”

  “You brought along an Irish hooligan to rough me up?” Gil said to me.

  “No. I’m the tough one. Ralph’s as mushy as my aunt Dorinda. Tell me, Mr. Morris, why are you stealing Violet Wilbur’s painting supplies?”

  “Violet’s painting supplies?” Gil scoffed. “Violet can’t even paint her own lipstick on straight.”

  “That’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” I said. “Your own paintings—well, have you ever considered visiting the eye doctor? Or perhaps—your atrocious painting of the farm animals is still giving me nightmares, you know—a mental sanatorium would be the ticket.”

  “Ouch,” Ralph murmured.

  I pointed to one of the paintings on an easel. “Look. This painting here doesn’t look like one of yours, Mr. Morris.” The canvas depicted a woman in an Elizabethan collar that made her head look like it was on display in a cake shop window. It wasn’t quite done—the collar was only half painted—yet it had been made with great skill. “Nor does this one.” The exact same painting stood on the adjacent easel—except it was finished. “No googly eyes in sight. Violet Wilbur made these, didn’t she?”

  “I know nothing,” Gil said, setting his jaw.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “You can’t make me talk.”

  “Actually, I can.” I stepped over to the table with all the painting supplies and picked up one of the paintbrushes.

  “Aw, Lola,” Ralph said. “Not the paintbrush tactic!”

  “Yes,” I said coolly. “I’m afraid it’s come to that.” I wondered what to do with the paintbrush. Tickle Gil’s nose until he cracked? I held it up and advanced toward him.

  “Flossie!” Gil shrieked toward the open door. “Flossie, can you hear me? Telephone the police! Hurry!”

  “Who is Flossie?” I asked.

  “The maid. She will telephone the police, you know.”

  And I was just getting warmed up with this Foe business. “I knew Violet Wilbur was selling forgeries, but I didn’t know she made them, too.” I gestured with my paintbrush in what I hoped was a threatening manner. “Who knew she had such skill? These paintings are absolute dillies. Did Violet learn to paint in finishing school, or, no, they’re so fine, she must have had training in—”

  “Shut up!” Gil screamed, clutching his cheek. “Shut up!”

  “What?” I blinked.

  Ralph was trying hard not to laugh.

  Then it hit me.

  Gil had made the forgeries. “You made these?” I asked.

  “Quite obviously!” Gil resumed dumping painting supplies into his satchel. “Flossie! Are you telephoning the police?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Why do you produce those hideous paintings that hang in people’s bathrooms when you can make things like this?”

  “To put all of you off the scent.”

  “Is that why you were painting the day we met you at your father’s house?”

  “Yes. Dad told me you were coming. I wished to keep up the ruse for your benefit. I’m not stupid, you know.” Gil stuffed paint tubes into his satchel.

  “A touch risky, isn’t it, peddling multiple copies of the same paintings?”

  “Saves me some effort, and no one has ever noticed before. Ding-dongs.”

  “I saw Violet Wilbur collect a delivery of fake Dutch old masters at Chisholm Woodby’s house. I suppose that was you driving the delivery truck?”

  “I need not answer your questions, you interfering nitwit.”

  I was still holding the paintbrush, so I grabbed a tube of oil paint—black, excellent—squirted it on a palette, and dipped the paintbrush. “I know,” I said. “I think I’ll try my hand at painting, too. How about a nice, fat, black mustache on Mrs. El
izabethan Collar here? Perhaps some curls at the tips?” I went up to one of the paintings, paintbrush aloft.

  “Stop!” Gil screamed.

  I turned.

  “That painting took me absolute eons, you dumbbell. You wish to know about Violet and the copies? Suit yourself—but get that black paint away from my work! There. Oops, you’ve gotten paint on your lovely pink dress.”

  Phooey.

  “Violet’s decorating business provided me with a never-ending list of buyers,” Gil said. “Now that the paterfamilias has kicked the bucket, of course, I needn’t bother anymore. I’ve just been to see the family lawyers. I inherited everything. I’m free. I need not marry Grace Whiddle anymore. I was only marrying her birthing hips so Mummy and Dad wouldn’t cut me off. But now, I can travel Europe as a free man.”

  “What about Violet?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t she your, um, paramour?”

  Gil didn’t answer; he was going toward the door, satchel in hand.

  “Violet prefers baddies,” I called after him, “and with this forgery racket, it seems that you’re a baddie. I wouldn’t have thought it of you, Mr. Morris—all the seersucker quite put me off—but now I see that you’re just the sort of enterprising criminal Violet would walk the plank for.”

  “You’re insane,” Gil said. “An insane busybody.” He was in the doorway now.

  “Who do you believe killed your parents?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t simply believe. I know.”

  “Who?”

  Gil turned. “That man-eating floozy in a nurse’s uniform, Beaulah Starr. You really aren’t very good sleuths if you haven’t figured out that she was involved in an affair with my father.”

  “We knew that,” I said.

  “Yet you don’t suspect her? Good Lord. She has the oldest motive in the book.”

  “Did you tell your suspicions about Beaulah to the police?”

  “Why would I? She did me a favor in bumping off the folks. It was her, though. She has a gun.”

  “Go on,” I said with a sinking stomach.

  “She was carrying on with Father for several months, you know, even at the Long Island house when Mother was away in France this spring. Naturally, I was a bit curious as to who Beaulah was—although God knows it wasn’t the first time Father had a bit of tart on the side—so once, when Beaulah had left her handbag on the carpet in the library when they’d gone up to the bedroom, I had a look. Saw her driver’s license and her Willow Acres identification card. And, of course, I saw her gun. A foul little Luger pistol—one of those German things. Ah, I see from your expressions that you’ve read how it was a Luger that killed Dad? Yes. That nurse merely committed two sordid crimes of greed and passion. So very blah.”

  Was it really so simple, after all? Beaulah Starr, double murderess? How could I have made such a duff about the inchworm and all that? Berta would never allow me to live this down.

  Gil slipped away down the stairs. A siren keened somewhere nearby.

  Uh-oh. Flossie had summoned the fuzz.

  “We’d better skate,” Ralph said.

  We rushed down the stairs, to the front bedroom, and out onto the balcony. No police in sight. Ralph climbed over to the next-door balcony and helped me over, and then we were inside the house that was crawling with furniture movers.

  “Was that your first time playing the Foe?” Ralph asked as we went down the stairs.

  “Yes, and this is the last time I’ll be wearing this dress.” Smelly black oil paint streaked across the skirt.

  Ralph grinned. “Well, you did all right.”

  We looked out a downstairs window to see a paddy wagon swing to a stop in front of Violet’s house.

  “Oh no,” I whispered. “Where is Berta?”

  “There.” Ralph pointed.

  Berta had moved the Duesy to a spot up the block in front of the movers’ vans. She was at the wheel.

  Ralph and I walked calmly out the front door, up the sidewalk, and got into the Duesy, Ralph in front and me in the back.

  Berta started the engine and pulled into the street. “When I heard sirens approaching, I suspected you would require a getaway car,” she said.

  “You’re a lifesaver.” I gathered Cedric onto my lap and looked back. Gil and the maid were speaking with a police officer on Violet’s front porch.

  Crumb cake.

  “Well?” Berta said. “What occurred in there?”

  I told her how we’d found Gil Morris, of all people, clearing out his painting supplies, and how he was Violet Wilbur’s accomplice—and the artistic talent—in a forgery scheme.

  “But is he also Violet’s gentleman?” Berta asked, steering carefully through a busy intersection.

  “Well, actually, I’m not sure,” I said. “He didn’t admit it, but it all seems to line up, doesn’t it? Oh, and Gil is throwing Violet over in order to sling off to Europe. However, it doesn’t matter much, Berta, because you were correct about Beaulah Starr.” I swallowed. “Gil confirmed that Beaulah was, um, making whoopee with his dad, Senator Morris, and that, ah, he once saw a Luger pistol in her handbag.”

  “Aha!” Berta cried, almost clipping a parked motorcar. “I told you so. At three o’clock, when I telephone the feed store and discover where Beaulah is hiding out, this matter will be nearly sewn up.”

  It sounded too good to be true.

  Ralph checked his wristwatch. “Well, time to head over to the bridal shop to see Grace Whiddle, ladies.”

  “About her diary,” I said darkly.

  “Yup.”

  30

  Four lanes of motorcars, buses, and delivery trucks rumbled in both directions on Fifth Avenue. Ladies with parcels and men in bowlers hurried on the sidewalk in front of Antoinette G. Lovell’s Bridal Shop. The shop windows displayed fussy gowns of silk, satin, and embroidery.

  Ralph parked half a block away and studied the shop. “I’m pretty sure fellows aren’t welcome in that joint, so I can’t see how I’m going in, short of slapping on a wig and some lipstick.”

  “You’d probably need to shave, too,” I said.

  “I guess I’ll wait here with the pooch,” Ralph said, “so I’m counting on you two to get the lowdown.”

  “You look like someone’s sticking pins in you,” I said.

  “Daggers, kid. I like to gather my own info. Now, listen. All you need to do is ask Grace where her diary is.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Sure. That’s all I need to know. How tough can it be to pinch a diary from a debutante?”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said. “But all right.”

  Berta and I got out. Berta was more convinced than ever that Beaulah Starr was our woman, but she required the lavatory. I was keen to ask Grace Whiddle what she might’ve seen or heard at Willow Acres and Coney Island, and to try to suss out if she was a murder suspect or not. Berta had been with Grace backstage at the Mermaid Queen Pageant when Senator Morris was shot, but she didn’t have an alibi for Muffy’s death.

  Inside the bridal shop, powder blue carpet muffled the noise of the street. Snooty-looking plaster mannequins on podiums displayed wedding dresses and shoes. Sophronia Whiddle perched on a pouf in the middle of the shop, her back to the door. A schoolmarmish lady in gray hovered near her.

  “Have you an appointment, mesdames?” Schoolmarm trilled.

  Sophronia turned. Her eyes flared when she saw Berta and me.

  “No,” I said, “but I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d pop in for a browse.”

  “Mrs. Woodby,” Sophronia said nastily, “I am afraid you are no longer eligible to wear a white wedding gown.”

  I beamed. “No, silly me, I ought to have mentioned it—remember dear Lillian will be wed soon. I’m looking for her. By the way—is my mother about?”

  “No, I dropped her at her home on Park Avenue,” Sophronia said. “And I was certain Lillian was having her dress made at Worth’s. In Paris.”


  Why did Sophronia Whiddle know that and I didn’t? I was a rotten sister. “Yes, well, she’s had a change of heart. Brides do, you know. Jitters, et cetera.”

  “Excuse me,” Berta said to Schoolmarm, “but would you happen to have this in my size?” She touched a mannequin in a cylindrical flapper’s gown with a daring V neckline.

  Schoolmarm’s jaw dropped.

  “I am to be married in a fortnight,” Berta said, “and I have not a stitch to wear. Mind you,” she added with a twinkle, “my fiancé does not mind that a bit.”

  Sophronia gasped.

  “I’ll just go look in the back,” Schoolmarm said in a tight voice.

  “I shall wait in privacy,” Berta said, toddling toward the dressing rooms. “These boots are ever so difficult to remove in this heat. My feet swell up like pot roasts.” She gave me a pointed glance over her shoulder.

  “Oh,” I said. “Yes. Allow me to help you with your boots, Mrs. Lundgren.”

  We passed through an archway to find ourselves in a hallway of dressing rooms. Five of the six doors were wide open.

  I knocked on the closed door. “Grace?”

  Rustles inside. The door opened. “Oh. The snitches—yes, Mother told me all about how you telephoned her yesterday. What’re you doing here? Don’t stare. It’s Mother’s gown—at least it was, until Madam Lovell added an entire bolt of fabric to let it out for me.”

  Grace’s sleeves poofed at the shoulder and then hugged as tightly as banana peels from the upper arm to the wrist. Her head—thick glasses and all—seemed balanced on top of the high lace collar.

  Berta said, “My dear girl, you look as though you are being devoured by that gown.”

  “You could fit an entire three-ring circus under this skirt,” Grace said.

  “Is there something the matter, Miss Whiddle?” an attendant asked, popping up behind Grace’s shoulder like a startled rabbit. I hadn’t noticed her back there.

  “Of course there is,” Grace said. “This gown weighs about a thousand pounds and it’s making me thirsty. I want some lemonade. Now.”