Come Hell or Highball Read online

  Bruno yawned.

  I prodded limp watercress with my fork. The conversation was having a soporific effect—or else I’d gone feeble with hunger—because I dropped my fork. I bent to pick it up.

  Lem, I should mention, was sitting on my right, and Sadie was seated across from him. So I couldn’t help but notice that Sadie had kicked off one of her shoes, and her toes were wrestling with one of Lem’s sock-covered dogs.

  I forgot about my fork and sat up.

  Hibbers appeared at Olive’s side, and whispered something in her ear.

  “The little piglet.” Olive stood. “I’m so sorry, but I must excuse myself. It seems young Theo somehow got his fat little mitts on an entire batch of cinnamon rolls, devoured the lot, and has taken ill.” She swerved out of the dining room.

  Cinnamon rolls? Berta. Maybe she’d made a double batch.

  Dessert was trembling molded gelatin. I declined a helping. When everyone migrated back to the drawing room, I excused myself for bed.

  * * *

  But I didn’t go upstairs. Instead, I stole back to Horace’s study. This time, it was dark inside. I tiptoed in.

  I had made it as far as the desk when the overhead light snapped on.

  My heart lodged in my throat.

  “There you are, Mrs. Woodby.” Ralph stood in the doorway, Cedric tucked under his arm like a football. “Looking for something?”

  “Um. No. Just … lost.”

  “Sure you are. Well, I’ve come to deliver your mutt.”

  “Mutt?” I narrowed my eyes.

  “So to speak.” Ralph plopped Cedric on the floor.

  “Come on, peanut,” I called.

  Cedric sat at Ralph’s feet.

  “He doesn’t like being ordered around,” Ralph said.

  “He’s my dog! Peanut, come to Mommy.” I patted my knees. “Come!”

  Cedric didn’t budge.

  “He’s kinda funny,” Ralph said. “Responds better to praise and cuddles. And kisses.” He winked, and strutted off down the hallway.

  I scooped Cedric up, flicked off the study light, and went upstairs. I couldn’t bally well break into a safe with Mr. Oliver slinking around in the background.

  The heist would have to wait till tomorrow.

  * * *

  When I entered my bedroom, the first thing I saw was Berta in a pool of lamplight. She was bundled in a pink quilted robe, reading in an armchair before a fire.

  She glanced up from her book. “Oh, hello. My. You do look a bit worse for wear, Mrs. Woodby. On a whizzer, are we?”

  “I only had three,” I said. Or was it five?

  A teapot in a knitted cozy sat on the table beside her. No cinnamon rolls—rats.

  “Did you procure the film reel?” she asked.

  “How could I?” I set Cedric loose. “There are people positively dotting the landscape. Never even had an opportunity to crowbar the safe open, or whatever it is I’m going to do.”

  “Yes. I have been thinking about that.” Berta lifted her book so I could see the cover. It was one of my detective dime novels, Hazard in Havana, by Frank B. Jones, Jr. “Thad Parker gets into the evil scientist’s safe by tricking him into opening it in front of him, and memorizing the combination.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that. Good old Thad Parker.” I kicked off my shoes and dumped myself into the other armchair by the fire. I told Berta about Ralph Oliver’s new gig as a faux footman, Horace and Eloise’s Amorous Olympics, and all the other outlandish details of the evening. I sighed. “By the way, is there any particular reason you’re in my room, Berta? Wait—is it because the maid’s room smells like underarm?”

  “How did you know? It was terribly drafty, too. I did not think you would mind if I slept in your room. It is quite spacious.”

  “But there’s only one bed.”

  “Yes, but the sofa looks ever so comfortable.” She gave me a steely smile. “Doesn’t it?”

  8

  By ten thirty the next morning, I was already whacking a tennis ball under an offensive sun. We were playing doubles, ladies versus gents. Olive was my partner. When Hibbers appeared with a pitcher of lemoned ice water at courtside, I crept away, croaking, “Powder room.”

  I was weak kneed, and my tennis dress was damp with perspiration. I hadn’t packed any sports costumes during my flight from Amberley, so I’d been strong-armed into borrowing spare tennis and golf costumes that Olive kept on hand. At that moment, I wore a green-and-white jersey sack with gaping armholes.

  Inside the house, the corridors were cool and dim. I went to the drawing room. I’d have fortifying quaff before returning to Olive’s gladiator amphitheater of a tennis court.

  The drinks table was in a corner behind a potted palm, so I didn’t see the figure hoisting the whiskey bottle until I was inches away.

  “I beg your pardon!” I pressed a hand to my heart.

  The figure turned. A tiny, round, wrinkly face smiled up at me, framed with tight white curls and a high Victorian collar.

  Why did she look so familiar?

  “Oh, hello,” the old lady said in a creaky granny voice. “I didn’t see you there.” She held up the whiskey bottle. “Drink?

  “Drown me.”

  She poured three inches of whiskey into glasses and passed me one. We sipped in sneaky, companionable silence.

  “That skinny she-devil running you ragged?” the old lady said.

  “Golly. Yes. Tennis. Then it’s the golf links after luncheon.”

  “Why he married her, I’ll never know. That boy loves to eat! And she starves him within an inch of his life.”

  “Do you mean Horace?”

  “Yes. I’m his aunt. Auntie Arbuckle.” Her milk glass blue eyes twinkled. “No one told you about Auntie? Keep me locked away, they do. In the North Wing, away from the guests. Think I’ll spill the beans.” She tittered. “Oh! I am a riot—spill the beans!”

  Perhaps she was touched in the head. Or sozzled.

  She suddenly looked serious. “Like this whiskey?”

  “Sure.” I would’ve preferred it with a splash of ginger ale, naturally, but these were desperate times.

  “Canadian,” she said. “Down to my last bottle. You can taste the northern woods in it, and the peat smoke of Newfoundland.”

  “Really?” I sniffed my glass.

  “No!” She hooted and slapped her knee with a wizened paw. “Got you good!”

  Okay: she was crackers.

  “The new butler won’t get me any more Canadian hooch,” she said. “Says he doesn’t know how. You ever heard of a butler who can’t get his hands on bootleg? Why, even before that danged Eighteenth Amendment passed, any butler worth his salt would get you a crate of liquor discounted, simply because he could. But Hibbers! Too hoity-toity for my taste.” She took another healthy swallow. “Hisakawa—now, he was a butler. The fluid grace, the civility! And such exquisite serving manners. His mother was a geisha in the Orient, taught him how to pour things proper. Watching him pour this here Canadian whiskey was like watching honey pour out of an angel’s—”

  “Auntie!” Horace boomed, emerging from behind the potted palm. Sweat blotched his tennis sweater, and he was out of breath. “I see you’ve met Auntie Clara. Has she been on one of her rants again? Olive calls her Ranty Auntie.”

  Auntie said, “I was just about to tell this dear young lady here about how you and that scrawny shrew you married chucked poor Hisakawa out on his ear without so much as a day’s notice.” She turned to me. “Because of the recipe, dearie. The pork and beans recipe.” She winked a crepey eyelid.

  “Now, why would Mrs. Woodby want to hear about a private domestic matter like that? Supposing it was even true.” Horace pulled me away from Auntie.

  “Don’t listen to him!” Auntie crowed after us. “He’ll say I’m crazy, but I’m not!”

  Now, I’m not a lady who enjoys been herded around like the most imbecile steer in a Texan herd. But since I’d been at Dune House fo
r almost a day and was no closer to getting my hands on that film reel, I allowed Horace to lead me back outside, onto the terrace.

  “Auntie Clara,” Horace said, “she’s … Well, her parents, if you must know, were first cousins. She isn’t right in the conk. And ever since we changed the label of our pork and beans, she’s been on the goddam warpath.”

  Through a whiskey haze, I conjured up the image of a can of Auntie Arbuckle’s Pork and Beans. “That’s why she looked so familiar! She’s the Auntie Arbuckle. That’s her picture on the can.”

  The pork and beans labels featured an image of Auntie’s rosy face, complete with the cumulus curls, high collar, and sweet-as-pie smile.

  “That’s her,” Horace said. “She’s out of sorts about the whole business. She has been generously compensated, of course, and my home is her home as long as she is with us. I think it’s a problem of, er, womanly pride.”

  I frowned.

  “Vanity,” he said. “She looks … old on the pork and beans can.”

  “She is old.”

  “Yes, but ladies always wish to look younger, don’t they? At least, that’s been my general impression.”

  Auntie Clara didn’t seem the type to have her pantaloons in a twist about growing older. She’d been wearing an antebellum gown and ivory dentures, for crying out loud. And what was it she’d said about the butler, and a recipe?

  “Horace,” I said, “not to change the subject, but I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you. About something very, very important.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you see, now that Alfie’s gone, I haven’t got a fellow to consult about, um, business matters.” That was a laugh; Alfie had had the business sense of a chickpea. “And you’ve got such a marvelous head for such things—you’re so successful, so important.”

  Horace puffed up. “What seems to be of concern?”

  “Not here. In your study, perhaps, before dinner?”

  “Of course, my dear.”

  Olive came striding around the corner of the house. “There you two are.” She thwacked the strings of a tennis racket against her palm. “We’re playing another match! Chop-chop, Lola. Practice makes perfect!”

  * * *

  “If you ask me,” I said to Berta after luncheon, “this trip to the golf links is questionable. I mean, all those reporters have been held off at the gates till now, but the instant we go out to the country club, they’ll swarm.” I sat down on an ottoman in my bedroom and yanked on my borrowed golf socks.

  “If you do not mind me saying so, Mrs. Woodby, it is those socks that are questionable,” Berta said. She was cocooned in an armchair again. She took a sip of tea. “Sadly, there are certain people who should avoid argyle socks.”

  I tied my too-big, duotone saddle oxfords. “Listen. I don’t know what you had for lunch—”

  “Oh, merely a simple roast beef sandwich and potato salad. Nothing special.”

  “What? Roast beef?” My belly rumbled. Luncheon in the dining room had been like feeding time at the county fair: crunchy and green. “Well, you may be devouring medieval feasts with the staff, but the rest of us are on prison rations. So no snide comments, thanks awfully.”

  “You do not expect me to mind your dog this afternoon, do you?”

  Cedric slept on the armchair next to Berta’s, but his puffy back was turned against her.

  “I asked Hibbers to come up and fetch him,” I said. “He should be here any minute.”

  I went over to the mirrored wardrobe and studied my reflection. The on-loan white sports blouse and green sweater vest were all right—a bit stretched out in the paunch region. Likewise, the pleated golf skirt had a passable, though dumpy, fit. But the socks. They were a brash, green-and-brown argyle pattern that did nothing whatsoever for my ankle concern. “I look like an escapee from clown college. Not like somebody who’s going to pull off a heist.”

  Berta picked up her book. “I was wondering when you were going to get round to that.”

  “We agreed to go into this thing fifty–fifty, if I remember correctly, but I’m starting to forget exactly what you’re doing, besides wolfing down roast beef sandwiches and perusing novels. Oh yes, and baking treats to stuff into the mouths of Olive’s children.”

  “I am tending to the back end of things.”

  “What back end?”

  “I am conducting research.” She tilted her book so I could see its cover. Another one of my Frank B. Jones, Jr., dime novels: Shakedown in Shanghai.

  “I haven’t gotten to read that one yet!”

  “I shall tell you how it ends. Thad Parker is a most resourceful gumshoe. When he puts the gun to the smuggler’s temple and—”

  I poked my fingers in my ears. “Stop!”

  A rap sounded on the door. I grabbed Cedric and yanked the door open.

  Ralph Oliver stood in the doorway in his baggy servant’s livery. “The butler sent me up to get the pooch.” He looked me up and down, and lifted his eyebrows.

  “Don’t you dare comment,” I said. I kissed Cedric, shoved him into Ralph’s arms, and slammed the door.

  “Oh, dear me,” Berta murmured. “We are hungry, aren’t we?”

  * * *

  As I’d predicted, as soon as our golfing party motored out of the Dune House gates, two reporters who’d been waiting in their jalopies revved their engines and followed us.

  Auntie Clara hadn’t been invited. Not that I could picture her with a putting iron. But it troubled me that there was some batty old dame stowed away in the house. It was rather Jane Eyre.

  Hare’s Hollow Country Club was a few miles up the highway. It was gated, of course, so the reporters who’d followed us were turned away by the two uniformed gatekeepers. But I had a feeling that the reporters would find a way in.

  We motored past the edge of the golf course, with its velvet turf and oak trees, to the clubhouse. The clubhouse sprawled on a bluff, its large windows and wraparound white porches overlooking the sea. A flag whapped atop the cupola, and a row of expensive motorcars squatted like shiny black beetles outside.

  I parked, and joined the others. But it turned out that there was a lot of fiddling about to be done, finding golf clubs and caddies. I left them all to sort it out, and retreated to the shade of the clubhouse porch. I wasn’t in a froth about getting started. Number one, I was famished. Number two, I was dressed like a vaudeville act. And number three? Oh yes: I loathe sports.

  I was just sitting down in a wicker chair when someone said, “Ahem.”

  I sighed. “Hello, Chisholm.”

  “Lola,” Chisholm said. “Good gracious, what on earth are you doing playing golf? You’re supposed to be in mourning! Wearing black, I might add. Not—whatever that is you’re wearing.” He managed to make his houndstooth golf knickers, jacket, and cap seem bleak. “To be perfectly honest, I have fears for your sanity.”

  “You’re supposed to be in mourning, too, you know. Anyway, I’m a grown woman, Chisholm. I shall do what I like.” I leaned back in the wicker chair and crossed my legs.

  Chisholm’s eyes flicked over my argyle socks. He drew a shuddering breath and then glanced over his shoulder.

  Four patriarch types—portly, bewhiskered, tweedy—stood several paces down the porch, conversing in thunderous voices. “Your doctor chums?” I said. “No, wait—they have the look of politicians. I get it. Hobnobbing with the bigwigs. I didn’t know you were planning on running for office so soon. What a pity you’ve got embarrassing relations like me to keep under wraps. The strain is beginning to show in your face.”

  “Oh, do shut up, Lola. Now, I expect a straight answer from you: Where have you been the past two days? Your parents have been frantic since their arrival home the day before yesterday.”

  “None of your business.”

  “If you’re holed up at the Plaza or the Ritz, keep in mind that you’ve no credit. If the hotel managers haven’t figured that out yet, they will in due time, and I for one have
no intention of bailing you—”

  “I’m staying with friends.”

  “Friends?”

  I wouldn’t dream of telling Chisholm about Alfie’s love nest; it was the only place I had to hide from him and the rest of my family. “I’ve been at Dune House. You know, the Arbuckles’ place. With film stars.”

  Chisholm’s lip twitched. “Low company, indeed.”

  I stood. “Better low than uppity, Chisholm darling.” I tromped away down the porch, my too-big oxfords slapping like duck’s feet.

  * * *

  Once our golf game was in full swing, I sent my caddie for a ham sandwich from the clubhouse.

  I’m not sure how I got roped into playing next to Bruno. I’ll admit, he was picture-perfect in his Fair Isle golf vest, tweed knickers, and cap. When he squinted after his ball sailing toward the horizon, I saw a gorgeous Sir Walter Raleigh at the prow.

  At the next hole, Sadie was just taking a few practice swings when two trilby hats rose from behind a grassy rise, about six yards away from her. Two boxy cameras emerged below the trilby hats.

  “Look,” I said to Bruno. “Photographers.”

  His head snapped up. “Where?”

  I pointed. “I knew they’d find a way to sneak onto the links.”

  “Sneaky devils.” Bruno strode over to Sadie.

  I leaned on my golf club to watch the show. If only I had a box of Cracker Jack.

  I was too far away to hear, but Bruno and Sadie got into some kind of spat, wildly gesticulating, nose to nose. The photographers jockeyed for angles, snapping away.

  The caddie appeared with my ham sandwich. I tipped him extravagantly and hid the sandwich down the front of my sweater. I was ashamed to devour such a hearty snack in glamorous company, so I smacked my golf ball into a stand of tall reeds beside a pond and went after it.

  I elbowed and crunched my way into the reeds. I tore the waxed paper from my sandwich and took a huge bite. The sandwich was half gone before I realized that there were other people in the reeds, several yards away, in earnest conversation.

  I stopped chewing. If I wasn’t mistaken, those were the voices of Lem Fitzpatrick and Eloise Wright. It almost sounded as if they were hammering out some kind of … business arrangement. I thought I heard Lem say deal and Eloise say but it is only fair if.…