Come Hell or Highball (34 page)

“And Vera Potter?”

“She knew what Bruno was up to. She was going to tattletale. You know that. I had to stop her. And she went and took the film reel out of Arbuckle's safe, the little fool.”

Neither Bruno nor George seemed to know that I had found the film reel again, and that it was now with Ralph.

“But how did you know Vera was going to meet me in the dunes?” I asked.

“I overheard her setting up her meeting with you on the telephone. Course, I'd been keeping my eye on her. I knew she was a weak link.”

“And you planted Sadie Street's lipstick?”

“Sure. Thought I'd kill two birds with one stone: Get rid of Vera Potter and, by pinning the murder on that wretched little biscuit Sadie, get rid of her, too.”

“The police laughed in my face when I told them that was Sadie Street's lipstick.”

“Well, you win some, you lose some.”

“Did you kill Ruby Simpkin?”

“I would like to, don't get me wrong. She's a loose end. But she took off before I had the chance. I'll find her, though.” George's eyes were red. He hunched to cough.

“How come you're such a crack shot?”

“I shoot game on the weekends. Makes me feel happy.”

My instincts screamed at me to back away. But I knew that the walkway ended. Dodging around George had failed. I had one option left, short of shoving the little creep over: Climb over the railing and go around him on the roof, monkey-style, to get to the door.

I hitched up my dress (exposing, alas, my knickers and the bottom half of my white rubber girdle) and climbed over the railing.

“Hey!” someone yelled far, far below. “Some crazy lady's on the roof! In her underpants! Hey, lady! Don't you know the house is burning down?”

I inched along, clinging to the railing. Smoke, gritty and hot, swirled around me.

“Gee, Mrs. Woodby,” George said. “You're making it too easy.” He grabbed my right hand and peeled my fingers away from the railing.

I screamed. My left hand still clung to the railing, but my feet skittered on the slippery roof tiles.

From down below came cries and shouts.

I gained a foothold by edging the toes of my shoes between the tiles, but I couldn't quite reach the railing again with my right hand. All I could do was clench my left fingers tight.

“Everyone down there is watching,” I snarled at George. “You'll go to the electric chair for murder.”

“Oh, no.” George touched my left hand. “They can't see us too well through all this smoke. It'll be a terrible accident. I'll say I tried to save you.”

He pried one of my fingers. My knuckle crackled.

I swore at him.

Then, instead of prying off my remaining fingers, George bent that one finger. The wrong way.

I screamed. I let go. I slid.

It happened slowly. Slowly enough for me to notice the way my dress and cardigan hiked up to my armpits. Slowly enough to feel my fingernails split on roof tiles. Slowly enough to hear the cries of horror down below.

My feet went over the edge. Then my knees. I clawed and scrambled, kicking the air. Over the edge of the roof I went, faster and faster—

And then, I stopped.

My rubber girdle, already torn by the machinery at the warehouse, had snagged on one of the gargoyles along the gutter. I dangled, knickered derriere exposed to the world, half on and half off the roof.

I hooked my arms around the gargoyle's wings and clung like a rayon skirt.

“Don't look down, Lola!” someone shrilled below. It must've been Olive. “The fire brigade is on its way! They've got ladders!”

I looked up. George Zucker was gone.

Off to the side a little, and three or four feet below me, Ralph Oliver thrust his head and shoulders out of a window.

I did a double take, which sent me bouncing, suspended by the girdle.

“Lola,” Ralph said in a low, soothing voice. “Don't move a muscle. I'm going to get you.”

“Don't you dare touch me!” I coughed. “You—you
stinker
! Why the heck are you even here?”

“I've been a couple steps behind you ever since you stole my motorcar. Had to kinda borrow my landlady's Chevy. But I didn't get to the warehouse on Wharfside till right when you were ripping out of there.”

“Tailing me? So you can give my mother a complete report?” I kicked the air. One of my spectator shoes dropped off. The crowd below murmured.

“Stay
still,
for God's sake,” Ralph said. “I'm not sure how long that gargoyle can hold.”

In the distance, fire engine sirens wailed.

“You know what?” I said. “I'm glad I crashed your motorcar into the ocean. Did you hear that?
Glad
.”

“You crashed my motorcar in the—? Never mind. Tell me later. Listen. I haven't told your mother the truth about anything you were doing, ever since I ran into you that first time at your husband's place. I don't even know why I didn't tell her, either. I just felt like … like protecting you, I guess. I kept putting her off, and telling her you were out shopping and having tea with lady friends and going to the hairdresser's.”

I shot him a narrow glance.

“You know it's true,” Ralph said. “Did your mother ever find where you were hiding out in Longfellow Street?”

“No.” I smooshed my eyelids shut. “What about the—uh—?”

“Hanky-panky?” Ralph chuckled. “That, kid, is strictly between you and me and the gatepost.”

My eyes flew open. “You were manipulating me!”

“Me? Manipulating
you
? When you kept going around smelling like cookies and blinking those big blue eyes at me?”

“What about your notebook? What about how you'd written ‘check' after your note about our kiss in the movie palace?”

“I hadn't finished what I was writing. I was interrupted. I'd meant to write, ‘check up on Luciano's past.' A kiss in the picture we were watching reminded me how he's an actor, see, so probably a good liar.”

Oh.

The fire engine sirens blared, closer and closer.

“You're so, I dunno,
jaunty,
” Ralph said, “and maybe a little crazy, but you've got this sweet, soft side you try to hide, so I—”

“Stop it,” I snapped. But my heart was already defrosting.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw red fire engines surge into the front drive. I dangled for a few more minutes. Then I was draped over the shoulder of one of Hare's Hollow's Bravest and lugged down a ladder to safety.

The fireman set me on my feet. My knees gave out. Another fireman wrapped a blanket around me and held me up.

I glimpsed Ralph climbing down a ladder and then a crowd pushed around me, jabbering in a way I couldn't understand. Hibbers glided through, holding a tray with a glass on it.

I stuck an arm out of the blanket. Hibbers placed a highball in my hand.

 

37

At the Hare's Hollow Hospital—really a weather-beaten, shingled clinic—the doctor shaved off a strip of my hair and stitched up the gash in my head. He tweezered glass shards from my palms, swabbed iodine on my grass cuts, and assured me that Dune House's gatekeeper, Mr. Strom, was unharmed, and two gangsters matching the description of Mr. Highpants and Frankenstein's Monster had been arrested, according to the ambulance driver. A grim nurse gave me a sponge bath. Then, clean and bandaged and wearing a paper-thin gown, I was escorted to a bed.

“I am told,” a disembodied voice said, “that your newfangled rubber girdle saved your life.” The striped curtain next to my bed whipped aside.

Berta was propped on a mountain of pillows in the next bed. Her arm was in a sling, and a Frank B. Jones, Jr., novel lay facedown on the blanket.
Trouble in Tokyo
. A vase of pink roses filled her bedside table, alongside a gigantic heart-shaped box of chocolates and the Eastman Kodak Brownie.

“Only a sprain,” Berta said, gesturing to her wrist. “Although you will have to cook for me for a few weeks. No chopping or kneading at all, the doctor said.”

“Whose birthday?” I gestured to the chocolates and flowers.

Berta flushed. “Oh, well, I—”

“Not Jimmy the Ant!”

“
Don't
call him that. He saved our lives, Mrs. Woodby. He delayed those gangsters at the warehouse long enough to give us a head start.”

“How did he send the flowers and chocolates so quickly?”

“He followed us from the warehouse.”

Ralph Oliver had been following, too. Quite the circus train.

A nurse bustled in with two glasses of orange juice on a tray. She fussed about Berta and me for a few moments and then went out again.

“Oh, this is lovely,” Berta said. “You know, we ought to make the most of this holiday, as it were. We are going to be very busy.”

“With what?”

“Why, with our retrieval agency, of course.”

“Berta, we're still just as broke as when we started. And now we're laid up, to boot.”

“No, no, no.” Berta shook her head. She leaned over to her bedside table, extracted a rectangle of paper from the drawer, and passed it over.

It was a picture postcard depicting rolling green mountains.
GREETINGS FROM THE CATSKILLS
, it said. I flipped it over. A message sloped sideways in a childish hand. It was signed
Ruby
.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“From Mrs. Arbuckle. Miss Simpkin, not knowing how else to reach us, mailed it in the overnight post to Dune House. Mrs. Arbuckle gave it to me as I was leaving for the hospital. Go on. Read it.”

The message said,

Awful sorry to skip town on you. Things were getting a little too hot in the kitchen if you know what I mean. That short fellow came around to the Frivolities and so I needed to clear out. If you found the reel please destroy it and I will be back in New York next week to pack up my apartment as I got a job here performing here at a resort hotel. Will pay you then no matter what pinky swear. I always make good on my promises. —Ruby

“Short fellow?” I said.

“Mr. Zucker. He must have followed us to the Unicorn Theater at some point and identified Miss Simpkin as one of the actresses on the film.”

“Yikes. Then it's a good thing she skipped town, because he might've killed her, too.” I paused. “Do you think Lem Fitzpatrick is still dangerous?”

“Of course. But surely he will move his smuggling operation to a new location, after all of this. I would not, however, return to Blue Heaven, Mrs. Woodby.”

“Right,” I said. “Say, what happened to George? After I fell off the roof, I mean.”

“I was not there, of course,” Berta said, “as I came here to the hospital soon after we arrived at Dune House. But the nurse told me that Mr. Zucker was captured inside the burning house, and he made some sort of ranting confession of murder to the police.”

“He loved Bruno,” I said. “He said he did it all for love.”

“Oh dear me.” Berta touched her locket. “That is not love, Mrs. Woodby. Fascination, perhaps, even obsession. But not love. And it sounds as though he was more obsessed with the idea of Mr. Luciano and his splendid film career, than with Mr. Luciano himself. After all, Mr. Luciano is, despite his good looks, rather a dullard, is he not?”

“I suppose he is.” I sipped my orange juice. “One thing I still don't understand is, why didn't Ruby destroy the film when she had the chance, before Alfie ever stole it from her?”

“Perhaps she thought she might save it for a rainy day, and blackmail Arbuckle or Fitzpatrick—or even Bruno Luciano—later.”

“What about the money Ruby has promised us? Three thousand dollars is a pile for anyone, and for a chorus girl? That's got to be her life's savings.”

“Think of it as
your
money, Mrs. Woodby. I suspect Miss Simpkin procured those funds by selling costly trinkets bestowed on her by, among other men, your own husband.”

The door opened, and Mother exploded into the room. “Lola!” she shrieked. “How could you? Oh, how
could
you? Your knickers are to be in the newspapers!”

“No ‘glad to see my eldest child is still alive and kicking,' then?” I said.

“Hold the impertinence,
s'il vous plaît
. Gracious. Look at your head. You look like a needlepoint sampler.”

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“Daphne St. Aubin telephoned me and said that you and some other lady—” Mother shot Berta a stern look. “—went to her house in disguise.” She lowered her voice. “Chisholm thinks that you ought to check into Babbling Brook. Only for a spell, until you're—”

“Check into the booby hatch?” I reeled upright. Orange juice spilled across the blanket.

“Only for a
spell,
” Mother said. “Then, when you are quite well, you can come to live at home. I can introduce you to that wonderful Mr. Raymond Hathorne whom I met on the ocean liner—assuming, that is, he's willing to overlook your latest escapades. I am happy to provide a roof over your head, Lola, truly. But you must cease to—”

“Mother,” I said. “Why did you hire a private detective to spy on me?”

“Did he tell you? Why, I
knew
that Mr. Oliver was a discount gumshoe. He's so—so
shabby
. And that ginger hair!”

“Why did you hire him?”

“Oh, Lola, can't you see? Your life is a
disaster
. When I heard that Alfie had died, I knew that it would be up to me to find you a new husband, but your ways have grown somewhat … dissolute. I needed to find out if there was anything that would embarrass me, and, of course, your sister, when I took it upon myself to find you a new match.”

Logical.
Insane
. Hopefully not a hereditary insanity.