Come Hell or Highball (23 page)

“There, there,” Bruno murmured. He wrapped an arm around me.

“I'll go find my motorcar out front,” I said. Bartell was waiting somewhere. I'd take a hot bath at Amberley and cook up a new escape strategy.

“I'll escort you to your motorcar, then.”

Bruno guided me along. He had his arm around my shoulders to keep the towel on, and he carried my highball. What a gent.

We rounded the corner of the house.

Smack into Miss Ida Shanks.

Now, usually, Ida scribbled in her notebook while some potbellied sidekick snapped the photographs. But this time,
she
was doing the camera-snapping. At me.

“Taken up photography, Miss Shanks?” I said. “Expanding your horizons?” I pushed past her.

“It rather looks like you are expanding
your
horizons, Duffy—or is it merely that you're wearing flat shoes?” Ida lowered her camera lens and snapped a picture of my ankles.

I barged across the side lawn. Bruno scurried at my side, still managing to hold the towel around me
and
hold my highball.

We reached the front drive. A battered brown Model T idled in the driveway. Berta roosted in the passenger seat with Cedric on her lap. I caught a glimpse of Ralph through the windshield.

“There she is!” I heard Berta say. She rolled down the window. “Mrs. Woodby!” she yelled. “Come quickly! The gatekeeper told us not to enter, but I instructed Mr. Oliver to gun it when—”

The rest of her words were lost under the roar of Ralph revving the Model T's engine.

I turned to Bruno. “Thanks ever so much, Bruno. You're an absolute peach. Give Olive my regards, won't you?” I shrugged off the towel and placed it in his arms.

His face looked almost … boyish. “But when will I see you again, Lola—may I call you Lola?”

“Sure.” I felt Berta's and Ralph's eyes boring into the back of my head.

“You're a…” Bruno's face softened. “You're a real girl, Lola. I don't meet real girls like you too often anymore. I'd love to see you again. Would you give me your telephone number?”

“Well, I—”

He delivered another heart-stopping Mr. Rochester look.

“It'll be listed under Alfred Woodby,” I said. “In Washington Square. But don't tell anybody where I'm staying, all right?”

“Why would I do a thing like that?” Bruno ambled away.

Had the world-famous Latin Lothario really asked me—
me?
—for my telephone number? While I was wearing flat shoes, no less?

The horn beeped.

“Are you coming, Mrs. Woodby?” Berta yelled.

I roused myself from my dazzle and clambered—still soaking wet—into the backseat of the Model T.

 

25

“I
did
so hope we would find you here,” Berta said as we tooled down the drive. “We waited for you at the funeral, but you never arrived. Why in heaven are you all wet? And what was Mr. Luciano saying to you?”

“Yeah,” Ralph said. “I've gotta hear this.”

“To begin with, I had a brush with death,” I said.

Berta gave a cry. Cedric propped his front paws on the seat back, and I lifted him over. I burrowed my face in his warm fluff. He licked my face. “Why does Cedric feel so heavy?” I asked. I heaved him up and down like a dumbbell. “What have you two been feeding him?”

“What about this brush with death?” Ralph glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were filled with concern. Not picturesque chivalry, as Bruno Luciano had displayed; Ralph's eyes were keener, and sort of bruised. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I'm not kidding. And don't look at me like that, because you're on my X-List. Permanently.” Humiliation about
L.W. kiss in cinema check
still stewed on the back burner of my mind. More pertinently, I was abuzz with the suspicion that Chisholm had hired Ralph to spy on me. But I couldn't let those things boil over. Too much was happening. Besides, it looked like Ralph was my ride back to Manhattan.

“X-List?” He chuckled. “Okay, I think I can live with that.” He steered through the gates and took a right onto the coastal road.

“What happened?” Berta asked.

I described how the gargoyle had come crashing down onto my teak lounge, and how I'd tripped into the swimming pool.

“Hang on a minute,” Ralph said. “You're saying the gargoyle just
fell
?”

“What are you suggesting? That someone pushed the gargoyle?”

“Seems more likely than it simply falling, wouldn't you say?”

I felt icy cold. “Someone tried to … kill me?”

“Does that come as a surprise,” Berta said, “considering the events of last night?”

“You heard, then. About Miss Potter,” I said.

“You forget we were staying at the Foghorn with all of those newspaper and magazine reporters,” Berta said. “For them, a murder is a feast.”

“Who was at that party back there?” Ralph asked. “Who could've pushed the gargoyle?”

I racked my brains. It wasn't easy. What I hadn't drunk in coffee that morning, I'd made up for in giggle juice. “Well, honestly, I didn't know most of them. They were motion picture people, mainly. Olive was there, of course. And Eloise Wright—she's divorcing her husband, by the way. Sadie Street and George Zucker were in the house somewhere, but I didn't see them.”

“Horace's family?” Ralph asked.

“Not that I know of … wait. Yes. Auntie Arbuckle.”

“What about Luciano?” Ralph said. “Could he have pushed it?”

“After he's been so chivalrous! I'll bet you're jealous.” The truth was, Bruno
could
have pushed it. He'd been out of my sight, anyway, at the right time. But why would he want to bop me off?

“Jealous? Naw.” Ralph's shoulders were rigid.

“No woman can resist Mr. Luciano,” Berta said. “I read about it in
Movie Love
.”

“What?”
I said. “Well, maybe as long as he keeps clammed up.”

Ralph snorted.

Berta swiveled around. “Mr. Oliver is suspicious only because Mr. Luciano is a motion picture star, and you are, well … oh dear me. You are not going to cry, are you?”

“I want to change into some dry clothes and have a cup of coffee,” I mumbled into Cedric's fur.

*   *   *

We motored into Hare's Hollow. The Model T shuddered to a stop in front of the Foghorn.

I took my suitcase and handbag, which Berta had jammed in the backseat, and went to change in the washroom off the lobby. I moved Sadie Street's lipstick from my skirt pocket to my handbag. My dip in the pool didn't seem to have damaged it.

It was a relief to be back in dry clothes. And in mascara, lipstick, and high-heeled shoes. There wasn't much I could do about my beaver-lodge hair.

I met Berta, Ralph, and Cedric in the Foghorn's crowded restaurant.

Between bites of gristly pork chops, oversalted scalloped potatoes, damp string beans, and sludge-strong coffee, I described how I'd arranged the meeting with Vera Potter, and how I'd heard the gunshot and found Miss Potter's body in the dunes.

“Vera Potter had a gun?” Ralph said. “It could've been for her own protection, but maybe she meant to shoot you.”

“I
know,
” I said. Would it cause a scene if I catapulted string beans at him with my spoon?

“Perhaps she carried the gun because she indeed knew something about the film reel,” Berta said. “Perhaps, Mrs. Woodby, she intended to kill you because of whatever secret the reel holds.”

Fear made me fork up my potatoes with gusto.

“We must unmask the murderer before you are killed,” Berta said.

“What about you? You're as deep into this as I am.”

“Indeed, but I am told I have an innocent face. No one would suspect
me
of having anything to do with murders and stolen film reels.”

“That reminds me,” Ralph said. “I got ahold of my junk-dealer buddy, Prince, last night. He told me the fleur-de-lis mark on the film canister was the imprint of a now-defunct film company out of New Rochelle. Pinnacle Productions. They made news reels, advertisements, that sort of thing.”

“News reels?” I said.

“How peculiar,” Berta said. “I was certain the film contained filth.”

“Inspector Digton wants to arrest me, by the way,” I said. I explained the chummy deal Chisholm had struck with Inspector Digton. “But
you,
Mr. Oliver, probably already know all about that, don't you?” I speared a potato without taking my eyes off Ralph.

But Ralph seemed genuinely surprised. “Chisholm?” he said. “You mean your brother-in-law? What's it to him?”

“You mean he didn't hire you?” I said.

“Nope. And it doesn't sound like he'd need a private eye, anyway, if he's got the police force doing his dirty work for him.”

True. My balloon popped. If Chisholm hadn't hired Ralph, who the heck had?

“I probably shouldn't even be here,” I said. “Who knows who else Chisholm has enlisted to snitch on me.”

“Then you are on the lam,” Berta said. Her eyes sparkled.

“Yes. Oh. And I found this.” I dug out the gold lipstick tube from my handbag, and set it on the table.

“A lipstick?” Berta said. “Nanny Potter did not wear paint. At least, not when I saw her last weekend at the Arbuckles' house.”

“She wasn't really the type,” I said.

“She was an actress, though,” Ralph said.

I hunched forward, tapped the lipstick, and whispered, “This belongs to Sadie Street.” I removed the cap and showed them the pointy wear pattern. “Digton laughed it off, but I think this is our pivotal clue.”

“You think Sadie shot the nurserymaid and dropped a lipstick in the process?” Ralph asked.

“It's a theory. Don't forget that Hibbers saw the missing film reel in Sadie's weekend bag.”

“Or Eloise Wright's bag,” Berta said.

“Eloise is the more suspicious of the two,” Ralph said. “All of a sudden she's managed to scrape together enough dough to leave her husband.”

“Maybe she's so anxious to be rid of Gerald, she'd rather be broke,” I said.

“That doesn't happen too often,” Ralph said. “Does it, Mrs. Woodby? Seems to me, usually ladies stick to rich hubbies like glue, no matter how rotten the fellow happens to be.”

My lips said nothing. But my eyes said,
X-List
.

“If it is indeed Sadie Street's lipstick that you found,” Berta said, “then—”

“Shh, not so loud.” I looked around. Nobody appeared to be listening.

The waitress arrived. She plopped a thick wedge of banana cream pie in front of me.

There was still a God, then.

“If it
is
Sadie Street's lipstick,” Berta said in a whisper, “you must prove it. Then you will be off the hook, and she will be arrested.”

“How can I prove it?” I asked.

“There's only one thing to do, the way I see it.” Ralph sipped coffee. “Break into Sadie's apartment.”

“We never learned her address,” Berta said.

I dug into my pie. “Back to square one.”

A lady at the next table spiraled around.

My forkful of pie hung in midair. “Miss Shanks,” I said. “I didn't notice you without that flea-ridden fox fur.”

“Oh, it's not
fox
fur, Duffy.” Ida leered at Cedric. At his lovely, fox-colored fur.

“You need to be straitjacketed!” I cried. “And, by golly, why are you always
following
me?”

She dragged her chair over to our table and sat. “Because, Duffy, you are where all the excitement is. Isn't that right, Mr.
Oliver
?”

Ralph eyed her lazily, but his fingers clenched his coffee cup. “How'd you figure out my name?”

“Sources, my dear. Sources. Now—” Ida turned to me. “—what's this I hear about Sadie Street's lipstick?”

Berta grabbed the lipstick, dropped it into the handbag on her lap, and snapped the clasp. “What lipstick?” she said.

“I'm not stupid,” Ida said. “Or blind.”

“Could've fooled me, with that dress you've got on,” I said. It was the same one she'd had on last night: green tweed with orangey-red trim at the cuffs. I frowned. “Wait a minute.” I bent to peer under the oilcloth. “I knew it!” A few inches up from Ida's hem was a rip. She'd repaired it with a safety pin. I straightened. “Sneak over any sharp fences lately? Say, anytime last night around midnight?”

“I don't know what you mean.” Ida adjusted her glasses.

I lowered my voice. “Stop bluffing. The police found a bit of your dress on the Arbuckles' fence last night. Why didn't you
change
?”

“I left the city in a hurry. Didn't pack a spare.” She glanced over her shoulder.

I hadn't seen Ida Shanks flustered since around the time we were learning our multiplication tables.

“I was only trying to take photographs of the motion picture people in the house,” Ida said. “How was I to know there would be another murder? But, since you have a rather savage gleam in your eye, Duffy, I'll make you a deal.”

I glanced over at Berta; Berta made a slight nod. I looked back to Ida. “Go on.”

“I'll turn over Sadie Street's address if you keep your lips locked about seeing my torn dress.”

“You really must be desperate, striking a deal like that with me,” I said.

She shrugged. It came off a little jerky.

Could Ida really be a murderer? What motive could she have?

“Deal,” I said.

Ida took a dog-eared notebook from her satchel. She flipped through—it was chock-full of smeary scribbles—licking her fingertips as she went. She found the address, jotted it on a separate scrap of paper, and passed it to me.