Come Hell or Highball Page 4

  “Sure,” Ruby said. “Three thousand smackers.”

  I blinked. “Three thousand—?”

  “Clams. Bucks.”

  “Does she speak of dollars?” Berta whispered to me.

  Ruby smirked. “That’s right.” She found a packet of Luckies and a lighter on the counter, and lit up. “Nothing up front. Find the item, then I’ll pay.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “Alfie leave you broke?”

  “None of your business,” I snapped. “Tell me what it is you want from the Arbuckles’ country house.”

  When Ruby put the cigarette to her lips, her hand shook. She inhaled, and blew a long stream of smoke.

  Berta wrinkled her nose and waved her hand in front of her face.

  “It’s a reel of film,” Ruby said.

  “Motion picture film?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t even know what that looks like.”

  “Sorta like a big, flat metal spool of thread. Should be in a round case, a canister, you know, with a lid. To protect it.”

  “Why do the Arbuckles have a film reel?”

  “Never mind why. Just get it back.”

  “Fine. What color is it?”

  “Metal color, silly. Silver, I guess you’d say. It’ll have a stamp on it, though. One of them little French flowery thingums you see on soaps in fancy hotels.”

  “A fleur-de-lis?”

  “Guess so.”

  “What does it signify?”

  “Signa-what?”

  “The mark—what does it mean?”

  Ruby puckered her lips, took another long drag. “Don’t know,” she finally said.

  Liar.

  “It’s in Horace Arbuckle’s safe,” she said. “In his study. Just get it.”

  A film. A chorus girl. A filthy-rich fellow. My expression must’ve been knowing. I’d heard about what naughtiness the French put on film. Berta must’ve heard, too; her body seemed to vibrate.

  “It ain’t what you think,” Ruby said.

  I glanced over my shoulder to the dressing room doorway. It was empty. But if somebody were to overhear …

  “I need the film back for career reasons,” Ruby said. “I wanna be a motion picture star, see. I’ve been told I could make it big. But that film reel—oh, golly, that film, if the wrong people see it, would ruin my chances. It’ll date me, see. They only want really young girls for the pictures, and I think you’ll understand, Mrs. Woodby, when I say that—between the two of us—I’ve shaved off a year here and a year there.”

  “Why would I understand? I’m only thirty-one.”

  “Sure,” Ruby said. “Maybe get yourself some new clothes, then. My grandma would think that suit you’re wearing is real swell.”

  I sucked in a shaky breath.

  Berta intervened. “Perhaps, Miss Simpkin, you are not proud of the content of the film?”

  “Not really.”

  Berta sniffed. “I knew it. Lewdness.”

  “You got it all wrong, lady. It’s simply bad … bad acting. I’ve taken acting classes since then, see.”

  “I do need to know why Horace Arbuckle has the film,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to know if I’m doing something morally reprehensible. Or illegal.”

  “The film is mine,” Ruby said. “You won’t be glomming it. You’ll be restoring it to its—what do they say?—oh yeah, to its rightful owner. Arbuckle only has it because your bastard husband stole it from me.”

  “Alfie?”

  “I knew he was broke. Well, I figured it out, anyway, once he stole that film from me a couple weeks ago, so as to sell it off to Horace. Alfie’s the one who told me it’s in Horace’s safe.”

  “Alfie sold it to Horace?”

  “That’s right.” Ruby, somewhere beneath her layers of Max Factor, was blushing.

  I sighed. “I apologize on behalf of my husband.” Being married to Alfie had been like owning the dog who soiled the neighbor’s lawn: a life of contrition by proxy. “And Horace wanted to buy the film because—?”

  “I said never mind what’s on the film! Just get it for me, okay?” Tears pooled in Ruby’s eyes, threatening a mudslide. “Get it before it’s too late.”

  5

  Berta and I made a beeline down the corridor, toward the Unicorn Theater’s stage door exit.

  “Piece of cake,” I said. “Get the film reel, get out, and collect three thousand bucks. Think of what we could do with that money!”

  “Are you not curious as to why a chorus girl is in possession of such a large sum?” Berta asked.

  “Not really. Probably pawned off some diamonds from another lady’s husband.” I was only pretending to be glib; I knew that three thousand dollars was a fortune for the likes of Ruby. She had to be desperate.

  “And Miss Simpkin was lying about why she wants the film,” Berta said. “Does that not concern you?”

  “How do you know she’s lying?”

  “First she said that the film would date her. Then she said that the problem was her poor acting on the film. She contradicted herself.”

  “Oh. Thanks, Dr. Watson.”

  “Dr. Watson?”

  “From the Sherlock Holm—”

  “I know quite well where it is from. But what makes you Sherlock and me Watson?”

  We dodged around a man carrying a trumpet.

  “Perhaps,” Berta said, “there will be danger involved in this—how do the gangsters say?—heist.”

  “Why do you sound so gleeful about the prospect? Listen, it was your idea to take this job.”

  “How will you get into the safe?”

  “Easy. I’ll use my feminine wiles.”

  “Oh dear.”

  We rounded a corner and passed into a lounge area—I vaguely recalled the term green room—that swarmed with chorus girls and swirled with cigarette smoke. Through the haze, a pair of keen gray eyes was looking straight at me.

  I stopped in my tracks, so abruptly that Berta crashed into me.

  “Hi there, Mrs. Woodby,” Ralph Oliver called. He slouched in a dumpy armchair, fedora pushed back to reveal thick, ginger-colored hair. A chorus girl perched on either arm of his chair. One had him by the lapel, and the other toyed with his hat brim.

  Despite Ralph’s armchair décor, however, he grinned at me, and in a way that made me unsure whether I’d rather kick his shins or unbutton his shirt.

  I narrowed my eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “Could ask you the same thing.”

  “I believed you were investigating my husband.”

  “Looks like you’re doing some investigating of your own.”

  “Don’t you ever give a straight answer?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Come on,” I said to Berta through clenched teeth. “We’re going.”

  It wasn’t until we were in a taxicab, trundling toward Washington Square, that it hit me: Mr. Oliver must’ve followed us to the theater.

  Was he investigating me?

  * * *

  The next day was Friday. I awoke on the white velvet sofa with a crick in my neck.

  Right after walking Cedric and eating breakfast—Berta had made apple strudel, scrambled eggs, and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice—I telephoned Olive Arbuckle at Dune House.

  “Oh, hello, darling,” she said, “how are you feeling? Lonely?”

  Actually, I felt reasonably spiff and spry. But I affected a mopey voice. “I was wondering if I might take you up on your offer to come up for the weekend, after all.”

  A pause. Then, “Of course!”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “I’m in the city now, but I’ll motor up and be there in time for cocktails.” I thought of Berta. The discreet retrieval agency had been her idea. She was going to have to come, too. “And Olive, darling,” I said, “I’ll have my maid with me.”

  “Your maid? Do you mean Penny?”

  Penny had bee
n my maid. Now she worked for Chisholm, poor thing. “No, no,” I said. “Berta.”

  “I thought Berta was your cook. She was at the funeral, too. Does she go everywhere with you?”

  “Toodle-oo!” I made a smoochy noise and cut the connection.

  * * *

  The afternoon turned out to be splendid for motoring, balmy and bright. Berta and Cedric napped the entire drive, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I whipped down the highway, spinning plans about the new life I could start with fifteen hundred dollars—Berta and I had agreed on a 50–50 split. I could take a secretarial course—wait. Too much sitting. I had my hips to consider. What about learning how to be a librarian? Nix that; I look terrible in cardigans.

  By the time we rumbled through Hare’s Hollow, the sunlight had gone golden, the shadows long.

  The Foghorn, a rambling inn on Main Street, was more lively than usual. Motorcars clogged the curb out front. I frowned. It wasn’t tourist season yet. What was all the hullaballoo?

  When I drew up to Dune House’s gates a few minutes later, my frown deepened. A throng of men in baggy suits milled around the gates. Some held notebooks and pencils. Others toted boxy black cameras, with camera cases strapped over their shoulders.

  “Reporters,” I said.

  Berta started awake. She mumbled in Swedish as she straightened her hat.

  I braked inches away from a fellow who was aiming his camera at my windshield. “I’d forgotten. Horace complained about the reporters.”

  The reporters went saggy-shouldered when they saw it was only Berta and me. One of them kicked the ground.

  “And I thought I didn’t look half bad in this hat,” I said.

  “They wish to see the motion picture stars,” Berta said. “Bruno Luciano and Sadie Street.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  The gatekeeper scurried up to my window. When he saw who I was, he yelled at the reporters to get back. They ignored him.

  “Go on ahead, Mrs. Woodby,” the gatekeeper said. “They’re like flies—gotta swat them away.”

  I crept the Duesy forward, and the crowd of reporters parted. I was almost through when a familiar voice said, “Well, well, well. Lola Duffy. What a treat.”

  Duffy? My heart skittered like a gramophone needle.

  “Hello, Miss Shanks,” I said. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly I heard my knuckles crack.

  Ida Shanks heard them crack, too, and it made her smile.

  I have a nemesis, and her name is Miss Ida Shanks. She is the society gossip columnist for the New York Evening Observer, and she has enjoyed a profitable career at, in part, my expense. Not a month has gone by without a wicked comment about me from this harpy, my identity disguised by only the flimsiest euphemistic veil. The trouble is, I’m on quicksand when it comes to Ida Shanks: she is one of the few people who knows that the DuFeys are really Duffys, and that before we made it to Park Avenue, our return address was 5 Polk Street, Scragg Springs, Indiana.

  Ida knows these secrets, by the way, because she’s from Scragg Springs, too.

  Ida wore her usual getup: blue suit, moth-eaten fox fur, wilt-flowered hat, stockings that bagged around her sparrow’s ankles, witchy boots. “Gadding about so soon after your dear departed helpmeet’s demise?” she said.

  “Gadding about?” I asked “Are we caught inside a P. G. Wodehouse novelette?”

  “Who is this appalling creature?” Berta whispered to me.

  “I have heard murmurs,” Ida said, “that your hubby’s legacy was not so ample as one might’ve thought. No comment, Mrs. Woodby?” She dug a notebook and pencil from her dented satchel, and started scribbling. “Fortune,” she said, “has … flown … the … coop … for … formidable … society … doyenne.… Wait. Scratch that. No … ample … inheritance … for … ample … upper crust … matron.…”

  The gates were flung wide by the gatekeeper. “Toodles, Miss Shanks,” I snarled.

  I was about to hit the gas pedal when the reporters erupted in a tizzy. Ida craned her neck.

  Berta and I swiveled in our seats. A glossy black Rolls-Royce pulled up behind us. The reporters swarmed. The driver of the Rolls beeped the horn.

  “The chauffeur honks at you, Mrs. Woodby,” Berta said. “Get a move on.”

  “‘Get a move on’?” I whizzed through the gates. “Tell me again, when did you take up speaking like a gangster?”

  Berta compressed her lips.

  We drove up the tree-lined drive. The Rolls was hot on my fender.

  Dune House came into view. Four mammoth wings, slate roofs, and five towering chimneys mimicked an English baronial hall. An ornate iron railing ran along the roofline like a high lace collar. Stone gargoyles lurked at the edges of the gutters. Windowpanes sparkled in the early evening sunlight. Despite its aged style, Dune House was brand-spanking new and had been paid for, I suspected, mainly with proceeds from Auntie Arbuckle’s Pork and Beans.

  Several luxurious motorcars were parked in the white gravel drive, and more sat next to a stone garage large enough to house an army. I’d been to Dune House before, of course, and I knew that out back were tennis courts, a swimming pool, a hedge maze, stables, riding paths through the trees, and, about a quarter mile away, a stretch of beach fronting the sound.

  I motored to a stop. The Rolls braked behind me. Two menservants, trussed up in double-breasted livery jackets, came down the walkway. I waited for one of them to open my door. Nothing happened. I spun around in my seat.

  “Cheeky!” I said. The footmen were opening the Rolls-Royce’s doors.

  Berta turned around, too.

  We goggled without shame.

  “I’ve never seen a motion picture star,” I said. “Not in person, I mean.”

  “Such a fuss,” Berta said. Her eyes were glued to the Rolls.

  A pair of slim girl’s calves came into view. Then the whole girl emerged.

  “Sadie Street, I’d guess,” I said.

  Sadie wasn’t, I had gathered from Olive Arbuckle, exactly a film star. Yet. But she looked the part. She had a lovely face and lithe flapper’s figure, dolphin-hipped and bosom-free, in a pale blue tube of a dress. Her flaxen bob came to curled points against her pale cheeks, under a blue hat.

  “Oh, shut up, George,” Sadie said, marching up the front walk. “I told you a thousand times, I’m awful tired of hearing about lighting and scripts and things!”

  A man surfaced from the other side of the Rolls. He was short and dapper, wearing a three-piece suit. He had dark eyes and a trim gray beard. A pleasant face, yet long-suffering, like a schnauzer who needs to go for a walk.

  Berta and I levered ourselves out of the Duesy. Berta went off to find the servants’ entrance. Cedric and I went to the front door.

  Hibbers was there to greet me.

  “Oh, hello,” I said to him. My voice had the hurt wobble of a jilted debutante.

  “Mrs. Woodby,” he said with a bow. He cast a regal smile down to Cedric. Cedric wiped his lips on Hibbers’s trouser leg.

  I stepped into the entrance hall. I was about to introduce myself to Sadie Street and George Zucker when Olive descended upon us. Then I was caught in a tsunami of shrill greetings, air kisses, and bony hugs.

  Oh boy. Three seconds inside Dune House, and I was already daydreaming about an extra-thick slab of chocolate mousse cake.

  “Where’s the pie-faced simp?” Sadie Street said as soon as Olive finished the introductions.

  “If you mean Bruno, he’s sunning himself by the swimming pool, darling,” Olive said. “Perhaps you ought to pop into your bathing costume, too, and join him. Nothing like a little fresh air and sunshine to—”

  “Where’s my room?” Sadie said. Then, to George, “I told you I couldn’t bear it if everyone was going to push me to talk with Mr. Pipsqueak. And for God’s sake, George, would you stop pawing at my arm?” She swished toward the stairs. “I suppose my room is upstairs somewhere?”

  For a moment, Olive’s face fell. But sh
e plastered on a smile—remembering, probably, that Sadie was going to be a big star—and scurried after her.

  “Nasty piece of fluff,” George muttered.

  Whew! What a way to talk about your main squeeze.

  “Sadie and Bruno,” George said to me as we followed Hibbers up the stairs, “—you’ve heard of Bruno Luciano?”

  “Sure. Brightest new movie star of the year, the papers all say.”

  “Sadie and Bruno are under contract to co-star in three pictures together. Production gets under way on the first one, and whaddaya know? They decide two weeks ago, when we start filming Jane Eyre, that they can’t stand the sight of each other.”

  “Jane Eyre?” I asked. “Sadie Street will play Jane?”

  “She’s pretty convincing once she’s got the wig and everything on.”

  Mental memo: Skip that picture.

  “The two of them have refused, flat out, to work together,” George said. “Pantheon’s investors are furious. I’ve got to get them to see eye to eye or we’ll be in the hole.”

  “Couldn’t you hire different actors?”

  “No. They’re under contract.”

  “Aren’t they breaking the contract themselves, by refusing to work?”

  George shook his head. “There are intricacies. Complications. No. They gotta be reconciled. And firing Bruno is absolutely out of the question. Didn’t you see The King of Sheba last fall?”

  “The picture where Mr. Luciano was wearing a turban and all that kohl under his eyes?”

  “Yep. That was the most profitable picture of 1922! We can’t let him go. Some other production company will snap him up. Pantheon needs him.”

  “Well,” I said, “maybe everything will get sorted this weekend.”

  “It’s got to. The investors have given me a week to patch things up, or else it’s curtains for Sadie.”

  “Highball,” I mouthed to Hibbers when he glanced in my direction.

  6

  As soon as Hibbers left me in my room—a lofty affair with Olde Englishe replica furniture—Cedric leapt from my arms and began sniffing about.

  I went to the windows. Outside, the swimming pool glittered in the early evening sun, surrounded by topiary trees. Only one person was out there, lolling facedown on a teak lounge. A man, long and sun-bronzed, with a well-muscled physique and dark, curling hair, wearing small white bathing trunks. Bruno Luciano.