Come Hell or Highball Read online

  “Immediately, Lola.”

  I was thirty-one years old. Why did Mother think she could order me around like a collie? “I’ll call on you later today.”

  “But—”

  I hung up.

  “Lola!” Olive was beside me. “Oh, Lola, it’s too, too dreadful. You weren’t going to leave without saying good-bye, were you?”

  “Um,” I said. “Of course not. Olive, I am awfully sorry about—”

  “No, no. I shall be fine.” Olive looked fatigued, but her kohl was crisp. No tears, then. “The police are still here, you know. They’re absolutely ransacking the house for clues. I do hope they find some. The very idea of a murderer loafing about is simply not to be tolerated.”

  “And Billy and Theo?” I asked “How are they?”

  “Oh, still green about the gills from those cookies. Nanny Potter is such a marvel with them, though. I’d be lost without her.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “What? Oh no. No, I expect I’ll be fine.” Olive’s eyes were fastened on something beyond me. I turned.

  Out in the driveway, Bruno was stepping into a limousine. George Zucker waylaid him and they had a brief exchange. George looked pleading. Bruno seemed irritated.

  Probably haggling about that film studio contract again.

  I looked back to Olive. Her face was glowy.

  Could Olive have shot Horace in order to free herself up for Bruno Luciano? How diabolical. And how preposterous.

  When Bruno’s limousine rolled away, Olive went inside without even saying good-bye to me.

  * * *

  I found Berta on the front walk. We watched George and Sadie bundle themselves into the Rolls-Royce. Eloise Wright, resplendent in a mink coat, whisked around Cedric and shot him a vile look.

  “I guess Mrs. Wright doesn’t like dogs,” I said.

  “There is no shame in that,” Berta said.

  “And for a lady whose lover—”

  “Mrs. Woodby! Language.”

  “—has just been bopped off, she doesn’t appear especially distraught.”

  Two menservants strapped luggage to racks, Hibbers overseeing it all.

  Nanny Potter jogged into view from the side of the house, with Billy and Theo straggling like goslings in her wake. Poor fellows. What would become of them? Olive would probably pack them off to some chilly New England boarding school.

  They jogged past the motorcars and out of sight again.

  “I wonder what ever happened to that rotten Mr. Oliver,” I said.

  “He took himself off to the Foghorn in town yesterday evening,” Berta said, “with the other extra hands Mrs. Arbuckle hired. No room for them in the house.”

  “I suppose he couldn’t have been the murderer, then, or the one who stole the reel.” How disappointing.

  The Rolls-Royce and the Daimler drove off. Berta and I headed toward my Duesy.

  “Leaving so soon?” Hibbers called.

  I’m positive Thad Parker’s getaways are much more slick.

  “No need to stick around like a wad of chewing gum on the sidewalk,” I said. “You look like you have something to say, Hibbers. Or maybe you had hot sauce on your eggs this morning? I told you to stop doing that, or you’ll wind up a dyspeptic.”

  “Madam is most amusing.” Hibbers came closer. “You requested that I inform you if I were alerted to the presence of a certain … item.”

  “You found the reel?”

  Berta elbowed me. “Shush!”

  I leaned in toward Hibbers. “Hand it over, pretty please.”

  “I did not find it precisely. It is more that I briefly … noticed it.”

  “Where?”

  “In an open traveling bag, madam, but two minutes ago.”

  “Whose bag?”

  “That is the predicament, madam. Miss Street and Mrs. Wright possess identical Hermès Frères weekend bags of fawn-colored calfskin. Both bags sat in the drive, amid the other items of luggage, in preparation for loading their motorcars. I happened to glance into one—its top had not been fastened—and I spied what appeared to be a flat, round metal canister, approximately the size of a dinner plate.”

  “Silver colored?”

  “Yes, madam. With, I believe, markings of some sort stamped on the top.”

  “That’s the reel! Which lady’s bag was it?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I regret to say that when your canine took the opportunity to employ my pant leg as a napkin, I was momentarily distracted. During the time it took for me to disentangle myself from Cedric’s jowls, both bags had been loaded into the motorcars.”

  Phooey.

  “Thank you, Hibbers. One more thing—is it true what Inspector Digton said, that you vouched for the innocence of all the household staff?”

  “Indeed, madam.” He hovered.

  “If you’re expecting some jingle,” I said, “I afraid I’m completely bust.”

  “Jingle, madam? Good heavens, no.”

  Berta, Cedric, and I heaped into the Duesy. Before I pulled away, I gave Dune House one last glance.

  A small white face stared down from a high window. My heart lurched. Wait. It was only Auntie Arbuckle. She lifted her fingers to twiddle a farewell.

  “Spooky little critter,” I muttered, and peeled out of the driveway.

  11

  Berta and I motored halfway to New York and stopped at a roadside hash house for coffee and a bite to eat. If I claimed that such establishments were foreign to me, I’d be lying. Even in my Society Matron days, I’d now and again skulk into a cheap restaurant for a fry-up.

  Once coffee was coursing through our veins, we talked over Horace’s murder in low tones.

  “Inspector Digton thinks it was me.” I forked up some fried egg.

  “Goodness!”

  “He thinks that Horace jilted me for another woman—Eloise Wright, I guess—and I was driven to murderous madness. Let’s just hope he finds a better suspect soon.”

  “Inspector Digton was ever so kind to me,” Berta said. “I even promised to mail him my shortbread recipe. True, he is rather stupid. He does not know about the film reel, either.”

  Oh yes. Berta and I had both lied to the police. Mustn’t forget that.

  “I can’t help thinking it was Olive,” I said. “She’s gaga over Bruno Luciano, and now she’s a wealthy widow.”

  “She is also at least a decade older than Mr. Luciano. Surely she has some sense of propriety.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “There was the key.”

  “What key?”

  “Did Inspector Digton not tell you? The killer may have lured Mr. Arbuckle to the kitchen by placing a pantry key somewhere in his reach. A key, you see, was discovered on his … person. It was even labeled ‘pantry.’ The killer knew he could not resist having access to all that forbidden food. All they needed to do was give him access to the key, and then lie in wait.”

  “That’s awful!”

  “Mr. Arbuckle made straight for my snickerdoodles, I could not help but notice.” Berta sipped her coffee.

  “Don’t look so smug.”

  “Leaving him the key is, perhaps, something only a wife would think up.”

  “A mistress would know about Horace’s weaknesses, too.”

  “Mrs. Wright, you mean.”

  “Yes.” I described Eloise’s whispered conference with Lem Fitzpatrick at the golf links. “She’s a sneak, mark my words. But, you know, everyone knew that the food was kept under lock and key. In fact, the way Olive was doling out the raw veg, everyone was probably peckish enough to kill.” I took a huge bite of sausage with tomato catsup. “You know, if either Olive or Eloise had known Horace purchased a film starring Ruby—a saucy film, if that’s what it is—they might’ve been jealous enough to kill.”

  “But to kill Mr. Arbuckle?” Berta touched her locket. “He was a nice man.”

  Not
for the first time, I wondered what Berta’s locket meant to her, and if there was a picture inside. She called herself Mrs., but then where was Mr. Lundgren now? Berta was a forbidding lady, and I was too chicken to ask.

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “Horace was the last one of the bunch I’d expect to be bumped off.” He’d always seemed to be, well, simply there, moseying in the margins, making big bucks, never complaining about his ballerina’s rations. “Aside from his dalliance with Eloise Wright, he’d seemed to be a decent husband and father. It’s a crying shame, especially since Digton’s going to go barking up all the wrong trees.” I pushed down my fear with more bites of sausage. “You know what I think, Berta? I think we ought to figure out who killed Horace ourselves.”

  Berta’s eyes grew round. “That would be dangerous. And foolish.”

  “You still want to get ahold of the reel, don’t you?”

  “That is a financial necessity.”

  “Okay, well, if Horace’s death is tangled up with the reel—and I’m not saying it is, but it could be—then looking for the film means looking for the murderer.”

  “Mrs. Woodby, it is one thing to search for a missing item, and quite another to attempt to unmask a killer.”

  “But if we’re looking for the reel, will the murderer care about that distinction? Nope.”

  “This is not what I intended when we decided to retrieve the reel for Miss Simpkin.”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly intend to be an accused murderess who’s just maybe the real murderer’s next victim, either.”

  Berta and I stared at each other for a long, long moment. We were going to do it. We were going to try to solve a murder.

  Which meant I was unquestionably nuts, just like the Prig said.

  * * *

  Once Berta and I were on the road again, I broke the silence. “To my way of thinking, it’s obvious that we’ve got to locate Sadie Street and Eloise Wright. One of them has the reel in her bag.” I half hoped Berta would call the whole sleuthing thing off.

  But no.

  “The little trollop has the reel,” Berta said.

  “Sadie?”

  “Yes. I am not, of course, a lady who gambles. But if I were, my money would be on her.”

  “So then you think she’s the murderer, too?”

  “Why not? Her eyes are as cold as ice.”

  “But the way Hibbers told it, the reel could just as easily have been in Eloise Wright’s bag.”

  “Why would that one have a film reel? A society matron—”

  I pressed harder on the gas pedal.

  “—a rich husband in the ever-so-dull department store business. The other one, the trollop, is an actress. Film reels are her bread and butter. Perhaps she is on the film alongside Ruby Simpkin.”

  A sudden thought hit me. I floored the gas pedal. We zoomed around a bend. Berta shrieked and clutched the dashboard. Cedric skittered on the rear seat.

  “Come to think of it,” I said, “Sadie did mention something about embarrassing screen tests the night before last.”

  “Aha! That is it. The budding starlet has something captured on the film that she would rather forget. Something she perhaps killed to forget.”

  “It’ll be a cinch,” I said. “We’ll learn where Sadie Street lives, and pay her a little visit.”

  * * *

  When we arrived at the Longfellow Street love nest, I went straight to the telephone and asked the operator to connect me with the Hare’s Hollow police department. When I was put through, first the secretary and then Inspector Digton scoffed at my request for Sadie Street’s home address.

  “Now, why would I give that to you?” Inspector Digton made a donkeylike guffaw.

  I pulled the earpiece away. When I put it back to my ear, Digton was still hee-hawing.

  “Thanks anyway,” I said, and rang off.

  Next, I had the operator connect me to the Pantheon Pictures studio in Flushing, Queens. It was Sunday, so I crossed my fingers that I’d get an answer.

  “Yeah?” a woman barked down the line.

  “Would you please give me Sadie Street’s address?”

  “You gotta be kidding me, lady.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up. I need to speak to her. It’s urgent.”

  “Do you wanna know how many calls I’ve gotten for her, and for Luciano and Zucker, from you pests today? Holy cow! I got better things to do.” She cut the connection.

  You pests, she’d said. She’d probably meant reporters.

  Motion picture stars and murder. What a sensation. That gave me an idea.

  I asked the operator to put me through to the offices of the New York Evening Observer.

  “Hello, Duffy,” Ida Shanks said when I got her on the line. She was a hard worker to be there on a Sunday, I’d grant her that. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call? Don’t tell me you plan to give me an exclusive on your full confession of murder.”

  “Really, Miss Shanks,” I said. “We’ve known each other since we were five years old. You know very well I wouldn’t murder anybody.”

  “Dear me—doth the matron protest too much? And I do seem to recall a violent incident during which you pushed me from the seesaw and pulled my pigtails.”

  “That wasn’t me! I’ve told you. That was Pansy Fennig. Anyway, I thought you might know Sadie Street’s address. That’s right up your alley, isn’t it?”

  Ida cackled. “Now, why would I do you any favors?”

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t got her address.”

  “Why do I think you’re lying?”

  “Think whatever you want, Duffy dear.” Ida hung up.

  12

  At four o’clock that afternoon, I dressed in my most matronly suit, a silk blouse, Ferragamos, and pearls, and made good on my promise to visit my mother. I took a taxi uptown and alighted at 993 Park Avenue. This was a ritzy brick apartment building with Italianate embellishments of creamy stone. It was fewer than ten years old, but it was already established as a Very Good Address.

  I said hello to the uniformed doorman and took the elevator to the twelfth floor.

  Father (with Mother’s militant counsel) had wrung Wall Street dry like a rag mop, so they’d been able to purchase the apartment next door to their first one, knock out some walls, and make quite a swanky spread of it. I rang the doorbell—gold leaf and rococo—and the butler cracked the door. He was a rangy, dark-skinned fellow with gray hair, flawless livery, and a condescending manner that I was pretty sure Mother had drilled into him.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Woodby,” he said. “Your mother has been expecting you.”

  “Hello, Chauncey.”

  Chauncey wasn’t his real name, of course. His real name was Fred, but Mother had decided that Chauncey sounded more butleresque.

  He led me toward Mother’s sitting room.

  The entry foyer had black-and-white marble floors, ornate moldings, and a ponderous chandelier calculated to bring on a migraine. I was used to those things, as well as the authentic Louis XIV furniture that looked fake. New to me, however, were the huge wooden crates everywhere. It looked as though a circus train had disgorged its contents into the apartment.

  Chauncey acted like nothing was amiss, even as he picked around loose packing straw.

  We reached the sitting room.

  “Lola!” my mother screamed. She hurtled herself forward in her chair, but apparently ran out of sufficient steam to actually stand up. She was what you’d call a statuesque woman, with gray-streaked, upswept dark hair and a face that was still pretty, despite the calculating glint in her eye.

  “Hello, Mother. Looks like you’ve bought up all of Europe’s movable bits—that is what’s in those packing crates, I guess?”

  “She’s redecorating,” my sister, Lillian, said. “Again.”

  “Hello, Lillian. Where’s Father?”

  “His club,” Mother said. “He said he needed to recuperate—from what, I cannot fathom.�
��

  Mother and Lillian reclined in blue brocade chairs beside a tea table. The room was overheated and smelled of old lady–ish perfume. Orchids burst from Chinese pots; satin drapes burst in swags around tall windows.

  “Lola, come here this instant,” Mother said. “Why, you look like something the cat dragged in, with those dark circles under your eyes.”

  “Because of the murder, Mother,” Lillian said. “Don’t forget that.”

  I kissed Mother’s powdery cheek.

  “How could I forget?” Mother said. “Lola, must you insinuate yourself in such unbecoming scenarios? First Alfie has a heart attack, then that Arbuckle affair so soon afterwards? We have Lillian to think of.”

  I sat, and started in on a lemon cream wafer from the tea table.

  “That’s right,” Lillian said to me. She appeared too feeble to raise her pre-Raphaelite curls from the chair back. She was pleasantly round, with that sort of marshmallow-white skin that burns in November and a face like a blue-eyed angel. Looks, of course, are deceiving. “I suppose you didn’t think of me for a second before you waltzed off to get involved in boozy murders with low company.”

  Low company. Now, why did that phrase ring a bell?

  “We have Lillian’s matrimonial prospects to keep in mind,” Mother said.

  Mother hallucinates, I have no doubt, about ordering bridal china for Lillian Carnegie or Lillian Rockefeller.

  “It’s not my fault that Lillian’s debut was met with lackluster applause last winter,” I said.

  “You’re rotten!” Lillian said.

  “Only checking to see if you still had a pulse,” I said.

  “Girls!”

  “By the way,” Lillian said to me, “what are you wearing?”

  “Widow’s weeds, darling.”

  Mother said, “I’m not certain that that length of skirt is advisable with your ankles, Lola.”

  “You ought to be in a party dress,” Lillian said. “You’re finally rid of Alfie.”

  “Lillian!” Mother said.

  “Mother, you said the same thing yourself just a few days ago, on the ship. Said he was a flat tire and an embarrassment and it was good riddance all around.” Lillian gave me a nasty smile. “Too bad he spent all the money.”

  My jaws froze mid-chew.