Indian Summer

by Ed Ifkovic

  “And all of it questionable,” I thundered. “If not biased and wrong-headed.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, I feel like your being here is an extension of a very unpleasant conversation I just had with that little Hitlerite.”

  Marks squinted, then turned to Stas. “So the word from on top has been to cut me out of the loop?”

  Stas drummed his fingers on the table. “You’ll have to speak to Captain Smith about that, but, mainly, yes. But try to understand, Johnny. It’s only because this is a murder investigation and not the usual town infractions. Captain thought you were too close to the townspeople involved.”

  “And Miss Ferber isn’t?”

  “You’re a townsman, one of these people. Millicent Wright’s nephew. You have history with them. You have connections with everyone. It’s not personal. You gotta see, Johnny, how it looks. So that decision was made. But I’ll tell you, at one point you’ll be informed. Trust me. I’ll bring you back into the loop.” I was startled to hear the cool deliberation of the trooper’s voice, the easy rhythm, the reassurance. I marveled at his diplomacy. At one point, reaching for my teacup, I caught his eye, and I swore I detected a gleam there. A momentary flash, a speck, a curious juxtaposition of warmth with cold calculation.

  Johnny was disarmed. “I only mean . . .”

  “Look, Johnny, this is not intended against you. And the Captain has told me personally that you are to be part of the end game, whenever that is.”

  Johnny nodded.

  “But the state police have to run things their way. And I’d suggest you not run things past Roger Emerson.”

  “He is the press in this here town.”

  I started to say something, but Stas held up his hand, but not obviously, a barely discernible gesture that stayed my remark.

  “And,” he leaned in, “no more letters to Miss Ferber.” The line emerged so suddenly, in such an even-keeled voice, that at first I thought I hadn’t heard him. But clearly Johnny Marks understood because his face got flushed, redness rising from the neck up to his temples, and he didn’t know where to look.

  “What are you talking about?” He cleared his throat.

  “Nothing,” Stas said.

  “I don’t know nothing about letters.”

  “Let’s keep it that way,” Stas said. “Now, Johnny, would you like some lunch? I think Miss Ferber is treating us today.”

  My eyes sparkled. “Of course. So long as it’s the seventy-five-cent blue-plate special.”

  Johnny looked from Stas to me. “No, I already ate.”

  “Last chance,” I smiled.

  He hesitated, but stood up. “That’s very kind of you.”

  ‘It’s nothing.” Still smiling.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Stas confided, reaching out to shake his hand, as Johnny started to leave. The constable nodded, looking boyish and confused.

  “Are you going to inform him, Stas?” I asked after Johnny was gone.

  “Of course. Captain’s orders.” But he smiled. “But he told me to hold off till the last minute. No surprises that way. We don’t know what Johnny Marks knows or who he knows. He’s a friend of Roger Emerson, so he can be dangerous.”

  “You played him well.”

  Stas frowned. “I didn’t play him at all, Ferb. That was a direct order from Captain Smith. Public relations, and all. I’m the Resident State Trooper here. Part of my job is to smooth feathers, not ruffle them. Especially with the constable. I’m just following orders.”

  “Well, you were very convincing. You actually looked like you like the man.”

  Stas smiled. “It may surprise you, Ferb, but I do. He’s just a smalltown sheriff in a nothing-happening town who suddenly finds himself looking into the face of murder. And deep down he knows he’s not very bright, that people make fun of him. He can’t understand why, and he feels out of control. Lord, Ferb, a law officer has to feel he has control.”

  “But he’s obnoxious and stupid.”

  “He is that. But if I were harsh with every obnoxious and stupid person I meet in my long day, I’d spend every waking minute filled with anger.”

  “I can’t abide stupidity,” I declared, lofty.

  He grinned. “I know. You can’t even hide your feelings.”

  “My friends know when I’m cross.”

  “I can imagine your New York friends are mighty scared of you, Ferb.”

  I grinned. “That’s the way I like it.”

  “I may be the only person who’s not scared of you,” he said, out of the blue.

  That took me by surprise. And as he uttered the words, I realized there was, indeed, that quality about him—he betrayed easiness in my presence, a lack of trepidation. I wasn’t used to that. People bowed and scrapped and fawned to avoid my fiery temper, my stinging barb.

  “Maybe some day you’ll be in awe of me, Stas,” I said, coyly.

  “Oh, Ferb, I already am. You are a wonder. But awe has nothing to do with being afraid of someone.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Twilight at the Inn: quiet. Carlotta lay in her room with a migraine, and I delivered Millicent’s supper but didn’t stay. Back at the Inn I stared out the kitchen window and caught sight of a shadowy presence. It startled me, but then, the specter slowly moving into the light cast by the kitchen, I saw the lurking figure of Eben, walking through the gathering darkness. Earlier, before going to Millicent’s, I thought I saw him at the side of the Inn, just standing there. He looked like he was waiting for someone.

  So now I stepped into the backyard. “Mr. Travers,” I yelled and I saw the shadow disappear, as though fleeing, then reemerge.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Are you looking for someone?”

  He came near and the expression on his face was, I thought, haunted. “No, ma’am. Had some things to tend to.”

  This was near the hour of Martha’s murder, I knew, and Stanley had said he’d spotted Eben up by Millicent’s yard, largely where he now stood. So I said, “It was this time of day when Martha died.” That seemed to startle him because he glanced across the way, through the darkness, at Millicent’s backyard, as though he expected to see Martha. Or someone else? He looked distracted. “What is it?”

  He said nothing. A pause. “Just a mite worried.”

  “About what?””

  But Eben, at that moment, seemed to snap out of a trance, looked at me nervously—I sensed his body tense up—and without another word disappeared into the deep of the yard, headed back to his house. I watched his retreating back.

  “Mr. Travers,” I yelled, but there was no answer.

  I sat with Carlotta in the parlor after a dinner of cold meat she had assembled. Neither of us ate, and I especially disliked the chunks of yesterday’s roast, tough-looking now, the fat at the edges gray and murky. I nibbled at a casserole of eggplant and late squash, also left from Julia’s cooking the day before, but even that dish, so savory when fresh, now was clotted, thick, reminding me of vats of children’s library paste. So I pushed my plate away and sat back, sipping wine and staring at Carlotta, who’d said perhaps twenty words during the failed supper.

  “Are you all right?”

  Carlotta snapped. “Do I look all right?” Then she apologized. “My nerves are on end.”

  “You’re angry with me, Carlotta.”

  Carlotta bit her lip. “Johnny Marks tells me you’re obsessed with finding me guilty.”

  I was surprised. “And you believed him?”

  She looked helpless. “I don’t know who my friends are now—who are my enemies.”

  I said nothing.

  “Are you my friend, Edna?” Carlotta asked, whispering.

  “We’ll see.” I stood. “We’ll see.”

  Later, the house dark and still, with Carlotta again hidden in her room, doubtless, I realized, tipping that elegant elbow with a fresh bottle of port, I drifted down from my bedroom, book in hand, and sat in the library, a Tiffan
y lamp switched on, and I tried to read. It did no good: I should have stayed in Manhattan when I returned, I told myself. Returning here to the Inn had done no good. But I felt the need to follow through on this, really. Stas and I, the two of us together. Things must have conclusions—novels build and sweep and dip and turn, but they end. The reader demands it, even if life leaves so many loose, unraveled ends. The logician demands completion, as does the fiction writer. Otherwise what am I left with? Fragments of a lifetime, shadows on a page, a day that goes on and on and on. And that’s unbearable. No, I concluded, I had to return here, and I had to sit in this library, unable to read, waiting for tomorrow when I would know the answer. Me and Stas Wolniak. Stas and I. The two of us. Together.

  The phone rang, but I let it ring. It stopped. Then it rang again, and I realized that Carlotta would not pick up. I stepped into the hallway and answered it.

  “Edna,” a voice echoed, sounding distant.

  “Yes?” I wasn’t expecting any calls, and this gruff, echoey voice was not Stas’ vibrant young baritone.

  “George here. Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to answer.” George Kaufman, calling from New York, sounding like a stranger over the wire.

  I sat in the chair next to the telephone, and breathed deeply. Lord, a real conversation, perhaps. I wished I had a cigarette or a cocktail. “Thank God,” I told him. “I’m sitting here in the house of doom, George, surrounded by silence, talking to myself.”

  He laughed. “Just like an afternoon at the Round Table—at least these days. No one’s there any more.” He paused. “Where’s Carlotta?”

  I listened. From behind Carlotta’s bedroom door there drifted the sound of Carlotta snoring, wispy sighs punctuated by sudden gasps.

  “Sleeping. In her room.”

  “Can you talk?”

  I sat up. “Of course, but quietly.”

  “I have something to tell you.”

  Impatient: “What is it?”

  But George, my successful collaborator, liked to take his own time. I knew that about him. “Now, now, Miss Edna. Let me provide the story line; you can add the characterization afterwards, the human dimension the critics say you add to my clinical, clipped prose.”

  Whatever was the man talking about? George could be so exasperating, if charming; but always the tender-hearted companion. I knew he found me difficult at times. Imperious, as it were, confrontational. Well, I had no time for namby-pamby word games now. Impatient: “George, this isn’t your usual slow assault on a Broadway chorus girl in which you savor the chase and she savors the cash . . .”

  I heard him swallow, unhappy. “Lord, Edna, do you ever show mercy?”

  “It’s not one of my cardinal virtues, I’m afraid.” I found myself smiling on the line.

  He started to laugh. “I miss you, Ferber. Get back here.”

  “George!” Then, slowly, “I miss you, too.”

  “All right, all right. You set me on a path of inquiry. According to Aleck, you gave him the same assignment, but he’d rather belch his way through luncheon of pan-seared steak and cauliflower hollandaise, then sleep the afternoon away, rather than do leg work.”

  “George!” Frustrated.

  “Here’s what I found out, and it isn’t really good for our dear friend, Carlotta. Husband number three, Nathan Brosnan, is a shady figure, but he seems more slimy than murderous. No one liked him and he did make money illegally through the Mafia, and he did finance Carlotta’s short-lived but successful return to Broadway, and he did lose it all, even before the Crash. You’ve heard of the Crash, Edna? Oh yes. You were the only one who stayed rich . . .”

  “Get on with it, George.” I spoke too sharply and looked to Carlotta’s bedroom door, at the end of the hallway. Carlotta, still deep in sleep.

  “When the money went and Carlotta deserted Broadway again, he sort of disappeared, back to Connecticut suburban lawns, where he belonged. The venture in New York was over. And I gather he made enough enemies. Rumor has it his underworld cronies beat him up one night in an alley off Mott, and considered encasing him alive in cement.”

  “Dear Lord!”

  “But he survived to annoy another person’s day. Oh, and another rumor. Someone told me he’d blackmailed Carlotta into marrying him—she was anxious to come back to the stage, and he had real cash, which she didn’t, but he wanted the illustrious and beautiful Carlotta Small as his arm trophy.”

  “But she dumped him.”

  “When the money was gone and she had had it with her second act on Broadway.”

  “Hmm,” I reflected. “And Jason?”

  “Now there’s another piece of God’s ill-considered creation. Even though he was married to her for less than one year, it was right after husband number one, Harold Brewster, took that dry dive off the penthouse. And he’s still around, many years later, dabbling in this business deal or that. He runs that half-baked summer-stock playhouse in Weston. What’s it called? Boredom Theater.”

  I laughed. “Burnham Theater, after his mother, I hear.”

  “But that is pure dilettantism. No money there. But it lets him believe he’s still involved with theater. He seems on the up and up, but barely so. Not so slimy as Nathan, to be sure, but a little rough at the edges. He’s been making the rounds of the New York publishers lately, even Doubleday, your home away from home, peddling her memories. But when asked to produce one slender chapter, he always balks.”

  “There is no book,” I announced, grandly.

  “For that we should all breathe a sigh of relief. We’ve heard Carlotta’s tiresome anecdotes enough.”

  “Does he want a percentage?”

  “Of course. A large one, in fact. But probably he wants to control what would be in it. Which suggests that there’s something to hide.”

  “What is it?”

  He laughed. “You’re the detective, Edna. Find out. But I’ll give you a push. It seems there was a lot of unpleasant chatter when he first appeared on the New York scene, long before you and I discovered Grand Central Station. Suddenly he’s there, throwing some money around, loud and aggressive, even accompanying Ethel Barrymore to some award event, in fact, but he connected with Carlotta early on. So early, in fact, that she was still married to Harold Brewster.”

  “An affair?”

  “So rumor had it. But maybe not. Carlotta had the reputation for being very New England matron, despite her flamboyant dress and drinking and drinking and drinking. But he hung around her, a pest and an annoyance, alienating everyone who knew her, and then Harold suddenly killed himself and Carlotta went into a tailspin, running back to Connecticut, carrying little Peter inside her, Jason followed, wooed and pleaded, and finally married her. She threw him out a year later, but he stayed in Connecticut, living nearby, raising a family.”

  My mind clicked. “The baby,” I stammered. “Peter.”

  He chuckled. “You’re not the first to think that. Peter was born a few months after Harold died, and some said Jason was the real father. Which, they said, was why Harold killed himself. Jason was even asked if he was, but he became enraged, sputtered, didn’t answer. But that whole period is a gray one, Edna. It seems that Jason first appeared in New York after Carlotta got famously pregnant, but no one knows for sure. He may have been around town, just not spotted yet by the gossip columnists. When Carlotta married him, so quickly after Harold’s death, she told the papers: ‘It is not quick. Jason has been around my life for a long time. My friend.’ So who knows? Carlotta, yammering and lying. She’s good at it.”

  I was silent. This was a new wrinkle.

  “Now no one seems to know much about husband number one, so what I tell you is sketchy at best.” He paused.

  “But,” I said, “I sense you’ve saved the best for last.”

  “Exposition, rising action, climax, Edna. Climax.” He chortled. “Harold was a dancer in a review, a striking young man, very popular around town. But not very bright, it seemed. Have you ever met a Broadway hoofer
with more than two consecutive brain cells?”

  “That includes the females, too, George?”

  He laughed. “They only need one functioning cell, those lovelies. Anyway, Harold, like Carlotta, was a heavy drinker and rumor says she made him a drunk. Who knows? She had the money. She was madly in love with him, head over heels, even sending him mash notes, as she admitted back then. They had this whirlwind romance, picture in some magazine—him holding her above his head, her looking drugged—but he was dirt poor. And she was at the height of her fame. Sam Harris warned her not to marry him. But Carlotta is headstrong, as you know, and her career was starting to falter because of the drink. Missed performances, mostly covered up, and journalists back then were more circumspect. She married him, said she didn’t care how poor he was, and moved him into her penthouse. When Sam Harris told her that the show would be closing in three months, or so, she said she didn’t care because she was pregnant. That was a shocker because she’d said she never wanted children.”

  “Who can blame her?” I editorialized. “A child is one long digestive upheaval.”

  “But here’s the corker, Edna. Are you sitting, dear? And this news is not commonplace knowledge. And the details are sketchy. Carlotta returned early from Connecticut one afternoon, a day early, dragging her pregnant body into the penthouse, and there was husband Harold, totally naked, Edna, doing some pirouette over the coffee table into the waiting arms of another equally naked—though drunk but happy—chorus boy.”

  “Boy?”

  “As in not g-i-r-l.”

  “Good Lord. Shades of Oscar Wilde,” I screamed. But I suddenly had an absurd, impossible cartoon in my head, the over-the-coffee-table leap executed by my rotund friend, Aleck Woollcott, into the arms of my friend, the suave and svelte Noel Coward. “God!” I babbled, coming to.

  “I’ve stunned you, Edna.”

  “That you have. What did Carlotta do?”

  “Well, the facts are murky here. She never mentioned it, of course. It’s not one of the stories she’s used to entertain us all at your lavish dinner parties.”