Come Hell or Highball (30 page)

“Good heavens, Mr. Oliver,” Berta said, parking her suitcase in Ralph's entry foyer. “I suspected you would be in someplace one notch up from the YMCA. This is actually habitable.”

Ralph's sitting room was cramped, and furnished with a hodgepodge of tattered antiques and smooth-jointed wooden pieces. A real—and to my eye, at least, quite good—expressionist painting hung above the fireplace, and the objects on the mantel were natural history museum in character: a wooden mask with googly eyes; a seal carved from bone; a round box of delicately grained wood; three arrowheads of some shiny, black stone. One wall was crammed with books, and a gramophone squatted on a mahogany buffet. The wallpaper was curling off, and the Oriental rugs were threadbare.

“I'll sleep on the sofa here,” Ralph said. “You two will have to kip together in the bedroom.”

“I shall go to bed directly, then,” Berta said. “If I do not fall asleep first, I could be kept awake by the snoring.”

“You snore?” Ralph asked me.

“She means Cedric,” I said quickly.

Ralph went to ready his bedroom—he'd muttered something about clean sheets and dirty socks—and several minutes later he reemerged. Berta bade Ralph and me good night and toddled off, suitcase in hand.

“How about a bite to eat?” Ralph said to me. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Yeah. Run-ins with gangsters will do that to you.”

Ralph's kitchen was tiny, but it appeared to be well used—especially for a bachelor's kitchen. Boxes and tins lined the open shelves. A bowl of apples sat on the table. Everything was spick-and-span.

“Pull up a chair, kid,” Ralph said. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over a chair, and rolled up his sleeves. His shirt was wrinkled, and he wore dark blue suspenders. “I'll fix you up.”

I sank into a chair. Cedric hopped down to beg for scraps at Ralph's feet.

Ralph washed his hands in the cracked sink and whipped a clean kitchen towel over his shoulder. He poured gin into a tiny juice glass painted with daisies. “Sorry I don't have any ginger ale and whiskey,” he said.

“This'll do.”

“Normally, I make something special when ladies come over.” He winked. “But it's kind of late. Sandwich okay?”

“Wonderful.”

Ladies came over? Well, of course they did. In droves, probably.

Ralph brought out a loaf of bread, mustard, pastrami, a tomato, and a brick of cheese, and got to work.

“Okay,” I said, “you grew up in South Boston. With—” I glanced around the kitchen. “—without a mother. So you learned to cook.”

He smeared mustard on bread. “Practicing your sleuthing on me?”

“Am I correct?”

“Yep. I learned to cook from the neighbor downstairs. She was Portuguese. So even though I'm Irish, I couldn't cook corned beef and cabbage to save my life. Ma lammed off when I was small. Left me and my two brothers alone with Dad. Kind of a rough-and-tumble childhood.”

By the clench of his jaw, I guessed
rough-and-tumble
was putting it mildly.

“Then what?” I said.

“Well, I'd grown up working with my hands, what with Dad in the shipyards.” Ralph sliced the tomato. “But I wanted to learn a real trade, so when I was sixteen, I took myself up to Maine, to Bath, and learned how to build ships.”

Shipbuilding. So that's how he'd gotten those muscles.

“Never finished school,” he said. “It's tough for me to sit still. But I made that table you're sitting at, and the chairs, too.”

I ran my fingertips over the pine boards of the table, almost seamlessly joined. He was a good carpenter.

Why did that make me want to slide my hands under his suspenders?

Ralph finished making the sandwiches. He plated them, and pushed one over to me. He sat down with his own sandwich. But he didn't take a bite.

He leaned forward on his elbows. “Lola. I've got to get something off my chest.”

I lowered the sandwich from my open mouth. “Yes?”

He twisted his hands. The sight wrung my heart.

I knew what he wanted to say. I felt it, too.

I stood, and circled the kitchen table. I lowered myself onto his lap and wrapped an arm around his neck. “You needn't say anything,” I whispered, my lips brushing his. I slid my fingers down his chest, under his suspender.

“Lola,” was all he said. He wrapped his arms roughly around me. I sank into him.

If our two previous kisses, in the Zenith Movie Palace and under the streetlamp on Longfellow Street, had been surprise parties, then
this
kiss was an all-out gala ball. Before I knew it, Ralph had a hot palm wedged under my garter, and my own hands had fumbled open his shirt buttons. His sandwich crashed to the floor. I was dimly aware of doggy-gobbling noises under the table, but I was too enfolded in the kiss to care about Cedric's figure.

Ralph drew his mouth away from mine. “Wait,” he murmured. “I've really got to tell you.”

I frowned. I'd assumed what he meant to tell me was that he wanted to kiss me. That, maybe, he was starting to fall in love with me. “Go on, then.”

“It's about, ah, work.”

My fire poofed out. I pushed his hand from my garter. “Oh?”

“About my investigation.”

“I already know quite well that you've been investigating me.”

“Okay. And who would you say hired me?”

“I haven't the faintest notion. I'd thought Chisholm, but then, when he couldn't find me … it's
not
Chisholm, is it?”

Ralph sighed. “I need to tell you, Lola. I can't—well, this just isn't right. You being here, and us—well, you know.”

“Who is it?”

He swallowed. “Your mother.”

“What?” I jumped to my feet. “My mother hired you to
spy
on me? And you didn't bally
tell
me? You're an absolute—an absolute
monster
!”

“I feel bad about it.”

“You should've told me before!”

“I've got bills to pay, kid.”

“
Don't
call me kid.”

“Trust me, I feel guilty about all this. You and Mrs. Lundgren have been real nice.”

“Nice?” I narrowed my eyes. “
Nice?
Is that what you call—call this?” I swept my hand between us. “Oh, sure, yes. How could I have been so stupid? You're exactly like Alfie—you're a ladies' man. I, of all people, ought to be able to spot a—a Don Juan when I see one!” I made a humorless cackle. “I've seen the way the girls circle around you like—like buzzards.”

“Buzzards?” He scratched his eyebrow. “So I'm some kind of roadkill?”

“You said it. Only tell me this: Why did my mother hire you to snoop on me?”

“She wired me from Italy, shortly after she'd received word of Alfred's death. Said she got my name from a client of mine, an American fellow who was staying at the same hotel in Rome, and she wanted to enlist my services. Asked me to just keep an eye on you.”

“But why?”

“I'm not exactly sure.”

“Did she think that I killed Alfie?”

“No, I don't think so. Although I checked on that.”

“What?”

“The doctor's report was clean as a whistle. Unless, of course, you figured out how to make his death look like a heart attack with digitalis or something, but I—”

“You're suggesting that I murdered Alfie.”

“No. I'm not. I mean, I'm a professional. I look at every angle. But I ruled murder out early on. You just don't have it in you.”

“Funny you should say that, because I feel like I could murder
you
.”

I dragged Cedric from his half-eaten pastrami sandwich. I marched out of the kitchen, through the apartment, and flung open the bedroom door. Berta was sitting in bed, reading in the glow of a lamp.

She gave me the up-and-down.

“We're leaving,” I said.

“Leaving?”

“You can't go back to that apartment,” Ralph said behind me. “It's not safe. Come on. Stay here. We'll talk it over again in the morning. You'll feel better then.”

I pushed past him to the foyer and dug for my coat. “The hell I will, you two-faced, conniving—”

“Mrs. Woodby,” Berta fluted from the bedroom, “calm yourself.”

“I'm
calm
!” I whisked Cedric under my arm, grabbed my suitcase, and stormed out. “I'll wait for you outside, Berta,” I said.

Berta joined me on the front steps a few minutes later. She carried her suitcase. The hem of her quilted robe poked out from beneath her raincoat.

“Did Mr. Oliver take liberties?” she asked.

“Worse. He's been working for Mother.”

Berta
tsk
ed her tongue.

 

33

First thing the next morning, after eating breakfast and tidying the ransacked love nest, Berta and I prepared to go to Mrs. St. Aubin's house. I had looked up her address in the 1920 copy of the
New York Social Register
I found in Alfie's bookcase. Tracking down Dune House's fired butler, Hisakawa, was our only good lead. There
was
Sadie Street's incriminating lipstick. But without a motive or any other clues to tie Sadie to the murders, we were up against a brick wall on that one.

I buttoned on one of Berta's dresses—brown flowers with a high lace collar. Even though I was wearing one of Eloise Wright's rubber girdles, I filled out Berta's dress a treat. Wonderful. I covered my hair with a floppy hat. I added scratchy wool stockings, the flat-heeled spectators, reading glasses, and one of Alfie's cardigans. Queen of the Frumpy Fishwife Pageant.

Mrs. St. Aubin had never laid eyes on Berta before, so Berta didn't need a disguise.

I walked Cedric, and left him on his pouf in the kitchen next to a bowl of fresh water and a Spratt's Puppy Biscuit. As though he'd eat it. I was uneasy leaving Cedric alone after the apartment had been pillaged last night, but Cedric would blow my cover.
Everyone
in my social set knew Cedric.

*   *   *

The St. Aubin mansion was a splendid row house—white stone, bow windows, groomed shrubs, licorice-black railings—one block off Central Park. Berta and I stopped on the sidewalk.

“Are you certain Mrs. St. Aubin will not recognize you?” Berta asked.

“Fairly certain. I haven't seen her since Lillian's cotillion last winter, and that was only the briefest hello. Besides,
look
at me.”

“I think you look rather nice.”

We mounted the mansion's steps and rang the doorbell.

After a minute or so, the door swept inward.

A short, plump man in butler's livery and white gloves stood before us. He had smooth silver hair, black almond-shaped eyes, and a serene expression. “Good morning,” he said with a lilt of Japanese accent.

Hisakawa.

“Hello,” I said in an adenoidal voice. “We are from the Maiden Ladies' Orphanage Fund, here to see Mrs. St. Aubin.”

“Does Madam expect you?”

“Not as such,” I said. “But we have been referred to Mrs. St. Aubin by Mrs. Virgil DuFey.”

“If Madam does not expect you, then you must write first,” Hisakawa said. “Good morning.” He began to close the door.

Just before the door hit home, Berta wedged her boot in the crack.

Hisakawa shoved harder.

Berta grunted, but held her ground.

“Madam,” Hisakawa said, “if you do not remove your appendage from the premises, I must telephone the police.”

“Go right ahead, Mr. Hisakawa,” I said, scrapping the adenoidal voice.

He stiffened. “How do you know my name?”

Berta and I exchanged a glance. Berta's face was burgundy—Hisakawa was still bearing down on her foot with the door.

“Oh, we know lots of things,” I said. “About Auntie Arbuckle.”

“Miss Clara?” Hisakawa said.

“Yes. And the secret pork and beans recipe.”

Hisakawa let up on the door.

Berta extracted her foot with a wince.

Hisakawa glanced over his shoulder into the marble foyer. He looked up and down the street. “You must come inside,” he whispered. “Through the kitchen entrance, in the back. Go around to the alley, and through the gate with climbing rosebushes. Five minutes.”

*   *   *

“Did you see the look on his face when I mentioned the secret recipe?” I whispered to Berta. We went around the corner in search of the alley.

“I did indeed. Thad Parker would be proud of your conning abilities.”

Walled gardens lined the alley, which was overlooked by the rear windows of row houses. We found an iron gate festooned with climbing rosebushes, and crept through into a courtyard with a mossy fountain, potted topiaries, and vine-draped walls. The kitchen door was down a short stair, concealed behind a tortured-looking espalier bush.

The kitchen door swung inward just as Berta lifted her hand to knock.

“Be quick,” Hisakawa whispered. “Cook has gone to take stock of the pantries, and the kitchen maid is out to market.”

Berta and I piled through the door, and Hisakawa shut it.

“What do you want?” he asked. “Who sent you? Fitzpatrick?”

“Do we really look like the sort Fitzpatrick would hire?” I said.

And what could Fitzpatrick, of all people, have to do with a pork and beans recipe?

“Then you know him.” Hisakawa took a step back. “Please. I do not—”

“Listen,” I said. “I need your help. I suppose you've read in the papers about the murder of your former employer, Horace Arbuckle?”

“Yes, of course,” Hisakawa said. “And Nanny Potter, too.”

“We're trying to get to the bottom of all that. Now. Auntie Arbuckle mentioned something to me about a secret pork and beans recipe, and she also told me that you were fired over something to do with the recipe.”