Come Hell or Highball (26 page)

“Maybe we missed something,” Ralph said. “Let's watch it again.”

But a second viewing revealed nothing more, except for the briefest flash, during the kitchen sequence, of a third person's hand, passing a spoon to Ruby from outside the shot. Prince stopped the film, and we studied the hand.

It was a man's hand, wearing a round signet ring of some kind. Whoever the man was, he'd been wearing a white smock, too.

And when Vera and Ruby dumped the ingredients into the pot, it was impossible to tell what the ingredients
were,
let alone the precise measurements.

We all sighed.

Prince removed the film from the projector and replaced it in the canister. He handed it over.

“Do you want to take the reel to the police?” Ralph asked me.

“After all my hard work? No. I'm getting paid. Besides, Inspector Digton would laugh this film off, exactly like he's laughed off everything else I've told him.” I stood. My legs felt like overcooked noodles. Bathtub gin. Whoops. “I wish to go to the Frivolities.” I would give Ruby Simpkin the film reel and collect my kale. I'd be able to think more clearly once I knew I could pay the rent.

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, Ralph and I were backstage at the Unicorn Theater. However, there was no sign of Ruby Simpkin in dressing room three.

“Excuse me,” Ralph said to a red-sequined firecracker who was bustling by.

“Yeah?” She looked annoyed, but once she'd flipped her fake eyelashes down and up Ralph a couple times, she put on a cute smile. “Who you looking for?”

She seemed to be blind to my very existence.

“Ruby Simpkin,” Ralph said. “Is she onstage?”

“Naw, it's funny you're asking, because Ruby didn't show tonight.”

My breath caught.

“Ill?” Ralph said.

Firecracker toyed with a peroxide curl. “Maybe.”

“Do you know where she lives?” Ralph asked.

“Say, you ain't one of them crazy obsessionals, are you? The kind that stand under the streetlamp and gongoozle up at a girl's window all night?”

“Not the last time I checked.”

“Yeah. You're too handsome for that sorta thing, ain't you? Guess you got obsessionals after
you
?”

I tapped my toe.

“Places!” someone shouted down the hallway. “Places for ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy'!”

“I gotta go,” Firecracker said to Ralph. “Come back again, okay?”

“What about Ruby Simpkin?” Ralph said.

Firecracker dashed away with an excess of swerve in her bumper. “Ruby cleared out all of a sudden,” she called over her shoulder. “Said she needed a holiday real, real bad.”

Ralph and I looked at each other. I was pretty certain he was thinking the same thing I was:
What if Ruby Simpkin had been killed, too?

*   *   *

Ralph and I rode the subway back to Washington Square.

I was hungry, exhausted, annoyed, and a little paranoid when we turned down Longfellow Street. The film canister was heavy in my hands. “I went through so much trouble to find this reel,” I said, “and Ruby ups and skips town?”

“Let's just hope she's all right,” Ralph said.

“My rent is due the day after tomorrow! I'm going to have to go home to my parents. Do you have any idea how awful that's going to be?”

“Yeah. Real tough. A double apartment on Park Avenue. A bunch of servants, a Rolls-Royce, and piles of cash.”

I spun to face Ralph. “Take that back!”

We stood in the conical puddle of a streetlamp, but Ralph's eyes were hidden by the shadow of his hat. “No.”

“Good-bye, then,” I said. My tone was haughty. But my feet wouldn't go.

“You've been lucky, Lola,” Ralph said softly. “You
are
lucky. You live in a city packed with people just scraping by. Now you're one of us.”

My eyes flooded with tears. One of them spilled down my cheek.

Rats
.

“And you know what?” Ralph said. “It's mostly not that bad. You're going to be okay. You're smart.” He smeared the tear away with a fingertip. “You're beautiful.”

More tears trickled. What the heck was the matter with me? Wait—he thought I was smart? And beautiful?

“Besides,” he said, “you've got your Swedish sidekick.”

“Berta's only in this because I owe her several months' worth of salary.”

“Nope. She cares about you. She'll never admit it, but she does.” Ralph held my face in his hands and smeared more tears with his thumbs. Then he kissed me, right there in the pool of the streetlamp, with the big, dark, noisy city circling us all around.

I gave myself a mental shake, and pulled away from him. “Wait a minute. You're doing it again.”

“Doing what?” His voice was hot. His arms fell to his sides.

“Tricking me into smooching you. So you can check it off the list in your horrible little notebook.”

His lips twitched.

“It's not funny,” I said.

“I think you might've misread something.”

“Your note said, clear as day, ‘L.W. kiss in cinema check.'”

“Okay.” He sighed. “I shouldn't have written that, but—”

“I knew it!” I
had
known it. But now he'd admitted it. My ribs ached, and not because of my girdle, either. I stomped down the sidewalk.

He caught up with me at the steps of number 9. He took my shoulder and turned me around. “I'm not going to let you go like that.” His voice was rough, but his hands were steady as he dragged me close and kissed me again.

I dissolved. I had amnesia. My only cogent thought involved wanting to unbutton Ralph's shirt.

He pulled away too soon. “Give me a thumbs-up out the window to let me know Mrs. Lundgren is back,” he said. “Don't forget to lock your door tonight, and I'll come by in the morning. We'll figure out what to do with that film reel.”

I looked at the canister.

“I could take it,” Ralph said. “I've got a safe at my place, if that would make you feel better. If you trust me with it.”

Good point. Why should I trust him with it? On the other hand, two people had been killed because of it, and I sure didn't want to be next.

“Okay,” I said. “I trust you. With the reel, anyway.” I pressed it into his hands and teetered up the steps. Would I ever see him, or that film reel, again? Who knew? I wasn't thinking straight. I wasn't even
walking
straight.

The scent of almond and butter unfurled from the apartment when I opened the door. A radio program clamored in the kitchen.

Berta had returned.

I closed the door, shucked off my shoes, dropped my handbag with the Brownie camera inside it on the floor, and yelled “I'm back!” I went to the window and gave Ralph a thumbs-up. He tipped his fedora, pushed his hands in his pockets, and strolled away.

My gaze trailed after him until he melded with the shadows. A snippet of my heart abandoned me then. The snippet was going to follow Ralph all the way home. Wherever he lived.

Whoever he was.

Suspicion smacked me. Ralph knew an uncomfortable lot of details about my parents. When had I ever mentioned their double apartment? He hadn't really come clean about that notebook entry, either. All he'd given me was a fever. And a missing snippet of heart.

Mr. Ralph Oliver certainly knew his business.

Damn him.

 

29

I padded to the kitchen. “Hi, Berta,” I said.

“Not so loudly. Ed Wynn is on the wireless.”

Golden cookies lay cooling on the table. Berta sat in her quilted robe by the open window, head propped in hand. A comic routine crackled through the radio. But Berta wasn't laughing. She looked … dreamy.

Uh-oh.

Cedric lay on his side on the pouf. His tummy bulged.

I chose a cookie. “I found the film reel.”

Berta snapped the radio off. “In Miss Street's Plaza suite?”

“Yes. In her weekend bag.”

“Quite in the nick of time. The landlord is due back in one more day. Did you tell Miss Simpkin you have found it?”

“No.” I told Berta what we'd seen on the film, including the hint that the factory was over in Brooklyn, and how Ruby Simpkin had scarpered.

Berta's eyes blazed. “The little cheat! Unless, mind you, she has kicked the bucket. If
that
proves to be the case, then I shall only say that I believe it
is
possible for harlots to get past the pearly gates if they exhibit the proper amount of remorse.” She tipped her head. “The secret pork and beans recipe was demonstrated on the film, you say?”

“Yes, but we couldn't really make out what was going into the pot.”

“Perhaps we ought to locate the Japanese butler Auntie Arbuckle mentioned. He must know something, do you not think? Remember, you told me that Auntie Arbuckle said he was fired over something to do with the pork and beans recipe, and that is precisely what the film is about. The recipe.”

“What's the point? Ruby's gone. We're still tapped out.”

“Have you forgotten that you are on the lam? That Inspector Digton might have a warrant for your arrest? That there is a murderer at large who has attempted to crush you with a gargoyle?”

Oh. That. I bit into my cookie.

“We could telephone the domestic agencies in the morning,” Berta said. “Perhaps the butler has found a new position.”

“I'm really worried something happened to Ruby. I mean, the other actress on the film has been
murdered
. I've got the willies. And what
will
we do about our finances?”

“We'll solve the murders, of course.”

“What has that got to do with finances?”

“If we solve the murders, the story will be in the newspapers.”

“Believe me, Berta, having your name in the papers isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

“You do not understand. We shall become famous. These two murders, because they concern film stars, are being covered in newspapers all around the country, from here to San Francisco. Go see for yourself at the newsstand. If we succeed where the police fail, we will become famous lady detectives. Our names will be made. Our discreet retrieval agency will be launched.”

It was far-fetched. Yet, there are times when you have to allow yourself to be swept up in somebody else's conviction and let it carry you through.

“Okay, Berta,” I said. “We'll solve the murders. But I'm not sure what we'll do when the landlord comes knocking.”

“We shall stay with my dear friend Myrtle, uptown. She has only a bedsit, but her bed is quite roomy.”

“Sounds wonderful.” I bit into a second cookie. In one short week, I'd gone from a four-poster in a mansion to the prospect of bunking with two aged ladies in a bedsit. Maybe we'd have three matching nightcaps.

I went over to the icebox. I did a double take. Berta was wearing petal-pink lipstick. I hadn't noticed it before. Lipstick! And now I realized that her hair wasn't in its customary bun. It had been curled into a shoulder-length row of waves.

“Did you go out?” I said.

“What?”

“You've got lipstick on.” I sniffed the air. Somewhere below the haze of almond and butter was another scent. Sharper, floral. “Are you wearing
perfume
?”

“Cannot a lady do herself up a bit without having the screws put on her as though she were a Bolshevik prisoner? If you must know, I did not wish for the miniature bottle of Le Jade to go to waste.”

“That was a business expense. You said so yourself.” I opened the icebox and dug out a bottle of milk. “Why so secretive? I wouldn't begrudge you a beau or two. Or three.” I poured milk into a glass.

Berta threw her hands up. “That is
precisely
why I did not tell you. Because—”

“So there
is
a beau.” I gulped milk.

“—because you would insinuate that my having an innocent meal with a gentleman was somehow on par with your wild flapper ways!”

“Who's the sheik?”

“Never you mind.”

“So there
is
a he.” I crunched down on a third cookie. “You know, Berta, you've never told me about your marriage. You were married once, right?”

“Why, yes. I was. To a lovely gentleman. But he—” Her fingers crept to her locket. “—he perished. In Sweden. It was so long ago, really, and I was quite young.”

“Oh. I
am
sorry.” I kicked myself for asking. But then, Berta could write a laundry list of all my foibles, yet I knew next to nothing about her. She was a walled fortress.

“Shall we return to business?” Berta said. “While you and Mr. Oliver were locating the film reel, I gathered some interesting facts about Bruno Luciano.”

“Still going on about him?”

“Your head has been turned.
Movie Love
was correct. No woman can resist Mr. Luciano.”

“No, I simply see no good reason to waste time investigating him. Why would he murder Horace Arbuckle? Or Vera Potter?”

“Blackmail. Blackmail gone wrong.”

“That's a laugh—Bruno's probably as rich as Midas. He's a film star.”

“Oh, but he has not been for long. You told me that, last weekend, Sadie Street made a cryptic remark about Philippe's restaurant.”

“Yes.”

“Well, Miss Street mentioned Philippe's because Bruno Luciano used to work there. As a taxi dancer.”

“What? One of those fellows who's paid to dance with the rich old biddies and whisper sweet nothings in their ears?”

“One small step away from a gigolo.”

“I didn't know you
knew
those sorts of words, Berta.”

“Simply because a lady does not say things aloud does not mean she is unaware.”