Come Hell or Highball (5 page)

A blonde in a silvery costume darted by.

“Excuse me,” I said to her.

She stopped. “Yeah?” She snapped chewing gum and eyeballed my matronly black suit.

“Could you tell me where I might find Ruby Simpkin?”

“Whatcha want her for? You ain't that lady who said Ruby tricked her son into promising to—?”

“What? No. I—she asked me to meet her.”

The blonde jerked a thumb down the corridor. “Number three.”

Dressing room number three looked like it had been bombed. Chorus girls dashed to and fro, getting ready, by the looks of it, for a number in which they were sequined ducks. Sparkly costumes were flung over chairs and exploded from garment racks. Makeup counters were framed by hot yellow lightbulbs. The counters were strewn with lipsticks, powder puffs, eyebrow pencils, coffee cups, magazines, and brimming ashtrays.

I spotted a red head of hair at one of the makeup counters. We picked our way over.

Ruby was applying lollipop-red lipstick. She lifted her eyes to meet mine in the mirror. “Oh,” she said. She screwed the lipstick down and popped its cap on. “You came. Both of you.”

“Miss Simpkin,” I said, “I—we, actually—have decided to take you up on your offer about the, um—”

“Hold on a minute,” Ruby said. “I'm not in the next number, so wait'll the rest of the girls clear out.”

A man yelled out in the corridor, “‘It's a Ducky-Duck World'! Places, girls, ‘It's a Ducky-Duck World'!” All the chorus girls except Ruby stampeded out of the dressing room, leaving us alone.

“It's my hair,” Ruby said. “Sam—he's the director—says it clashes with those lousy duck costumes.” She wore a jester's costume, with a purple-and-yellow harlequin bodice, and purple high heels. “So. Changed your mind about my offer, huh?”

“Well, yes. I—”

“Let us first discuss the fee,” Berta interrupted.

“Sure,” Ruby said. “Three thousand smackers.”

I blinked. “Three thousand—?”

“Clams. Bucks.”

“Does she speak of dollars?” Berta whispered to me.

Ruby smirked. “That's right.” She found a packet of Luckies and a lighter on the counter, and lit up. “Nothing up front. Find the item, then I'll pay.”

“Deal,” I said.

“Alfie leave you broke?”

“None of your business,” I snapped. “Tell me what it is you want from the Arbuckles' country house.”

When Ruby put the cigarette to her lips, her hand shook. She inhaled, and blew a long stream of smoke.

Berta wrinkled her nose and waved her hand in front of her face.

“It's a reel of film,” Ruby said.

“Motion picture film?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I don't even know what that looks like.”

“Sorta like a big, flat metal spool of thread. Should be in a round case, a canister, you know, with a lid. To protect it.”

“Why do the Arbuckles have a film reel?”

“Never mind why. Just get it back.”

“Fine. What color is it?”

“Metal color, silly. Silver, I guess you'd say. It'll have a stamp on it, though. One of them little French flowery thingums you see on soaps in fancy hotels.”

“A fleur-de-lis?”

“Guess so.”

“What does it signify?”

“Signa-what?”

“The mark—what does it mean?”

Ruby puckered her lips, took another long drag. “Don't know,” she finally said.

Liar.

“It's in Horace Arbuckle's safe,” she said. “In his study. Just get it.”

A film. A chorus girl. A filthy-rich fellow. My expression must've been knowing. I'd heard about what naughtiness the French put on film. Berta must've heard, too; her body seemed to vibrate.

“It ain't what you think,” Ruby said.

I glanced over my shoulder to the dressing room doorway. It was empty. But if somebody were to overhear …

“I need the film back for career reasons,” Ruby said. “I wanna be a motion picture star, see. I've been told I could make it big. But that film reel—oh, golly, that film, if the wrong people see it, would ruin my chances. It'll date me, see. They only want really young girls for the pictures, and I think you'll understand, Mrs. Woodby, when I say that—between the two of us—I've shaved off a year here and a year there.”

“Why would
I
understand? I'm only thirty-one.”

“Sure,” Ruby said. “Maybe get yourself some new clothes, then. My grandma would think that suit you're wearing is real swell.”

I sucked in a shaky breath.

Berta intervened. “Perhaps, Miss Simpkin, you are not proud of the content of the film?”

“Not really.”

Berta sniffed. “I knew it. Lewdness.”

“You got it all wrong, lady. It's simply bad … bad acting. I've taken acting classes since then, see.”

“I
do
need to know why Horace Arbuckle has the film,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I need to know if I'm doing something morally reprehensible. Or illegal.”

“The film is mine,” Ruby said. “You won't be glomming it. You'll be restoring it to its—what do they say?—oh yeah, to its rightful owner. Arbuckle only has it because your bastard husband stole it from
me.
”

“Alfie?”

“I knew he was broke. Well, I figured it out, anyway, once he stole that film from me a couple weeks ago, so as to sell it off to Horace. Alfie's the one who told me it's in Horace's safe.”

“Alfie
sold
it to Horace?”

“That's right.” Ruby, somewhere beneath her layers of Max Factor, was blushing.

I sighed. “I apologize on behalf of my husband.” Being married to Alfie had been like owning the dog who soiled the neighbor's lawn: a life of contrition by proxy. “And Horace wanted to buy the film because—?”

“I said never mind what's on the film! Just get it for me, okay?” Tears pooled in Ruby's eyes, threatening a mudslide. “Get it before it's too late.”

 

5

Berta and I made a beeline down the corridor, toward the Unicorn Theater's stage door exit.

“Piece of cake,” I said. “Get the film reel, get out, and collect three thousand bucks. Think of what we could do with that money!”

“Are you not curious as to why a chorus girl is in possession of such a large sum?” Berta asked.

“Not really. Probably pawned off some diamonds from another lady's husband.” I was only pretending to be glib; I knew that three thousand dollars was a fortune for the likes of Ruby. She had to be desperate.

“And Miss Simpkin was lying about why she wants the film,” Berta said. “Does
that
not concern you?”

“How do you know she's lying?”

“First she said that the film would date her. Then she said that the problem was her poor acting on the film. She contradicted herself.”

“Oh. Thanks, Dr. Watson.”

“Dr. Watson?”

“From the Sherlock Holm—”

“I know quite well where it is from. But what makes
you
Sherlock and
me
Watson?”

We dodged around a man carrying a trumpet.

“Perhaps,” Berta said, “there will be danger involved in this—how do the gangsters say?—
heist
.”

“Why do you sound so gleeful about the prospect? Listen, it was your idea to take this job.”

“How will you get into the safe?”

“Easy. I'll use my feminine wiles.”

“Oh dear.”

We rounded a corner and passed into a lounge area—I vaguely recalled the term
green room
—that swarmed with chorus girls and swirled with cigarette smoke. Through the haze, a pair of keen gray eyes was looking straight at me.

I stopped in my tracks, so abruptly that Berta crashed into me.

“Hi there, Mrs. Woodby,” Ralph Oliver called. He slouched in a dumpy armchair, fedora pushed back to reveal thick, ginger-colored hair. A chorus girl perched on either arm of his chair. One had him by the lapel, and the other toyed with his hat brim.

Despite Ralph's armchair décor, however, he grinned at
me,
and in a way that made me unsure whether I'd rather kick his shins or unbutton his shirt.

I narrowed my eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Could ask you the same thing.”

“I believed you were investigating my husband.”

“Looks like you're doing some investigating of your own.”

“Don't you ever give a straight answer?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Come on,” I said to Berta through clenched teeth. “We're going.”

It wasn't until we were in a taxicab, trundling toward Washington Square, that it hit me: Mr. Oliver must've followed us to the theater.

Was he investigating
me
?

*   *   *

The next day was Friday. I awoke on the white velvet sofa with a crick in my neck.

Right after walking Cedric and eating breakfast—Berta had made apple strudel, scrambled eggs, and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice—I telephoned Olive Arbuckle at Dune House.

“Oh, hello, darling,” she said, “how are you feeling? Lonely?”

Actually, I felt reasonably spiff and spry. But I affected a mopey voice. “I was wondering if I might take you up on your offer to come up for the weekend, after all.”

A pause. Then, “Of course!”

“Wonderful,” I said. “I'm in the city now, but I'll motor up and be there in time for cocktails.” I thought of Berta. The discreet retrieval agency
had
been her idea. She was going to have to come, too. “And Olive, darling,” I said, “I'll have my maid with me.”

“Your maid? Do you mean Penny?”

Penny
had
been my maid. Now she worked for Chisholm, poor thing. “No, no,” I said. “Berta.”

“I thought Berta was your cook. She was at the funeral, too. Does she go
everywhere
with you?”

“Toodle-oo!” I made a smoochy noise and cut the connection.

*   *   *

The afternoon turned out to be splendid for motoring, balmy and bright. Berta and Cedric napped the entire drive, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I whipped down the highway, spinning plans about the new life I could start with fifteen hundred dollars—Berta and I had agreed on a 50–50 split. I could take a secretarial course—wait. Too much sitting. I had my hips to consider. What about learning how to be a librarian? Nix that; I look terrible in cardigans.

By the time we rumbled through Hare's Hollow, the sunlight had gone golden, the shadows long.

The Foghorn, a rambling inn on Main Street, was more lively than usual. Motorcars clogged the curb out front. I frowned. It wasn't tourist season yet. What was all the hullaballoo?

When I drew up to Dune House's gates a few minutes later, my frown deepened. A throng of men in baggy suits milled around the gates. Some held notebooks and pencils. Others toted boxy black cameras, with camera cases strapped over their shoulders.

“Reporters,” I said.

Berta started awake. She mumbled in Swedish as she straightened her hat.

I braked inches away from a fellow who was aiming his camera at my windshield. “I'd forgotten. Horace complained about the reporters.”

The reporters went saggy-shouldered when they saw it was only Berta and me. One of them kicked the ground.

“And I thought I didn't look half bad in this hat,” I said.

“They wish to see the motion picture stars,” Berta said. “Bruno Luciano and Sadie Street.”

“Oh, I know.”

The gatekeeper scurried up to my window. When he saw who I was, he yelled at the reporters to get back. They ignored him.

“Go on ahead, Mrs. Woodby,” the gatekeeper said. “They're like flies—gotta swat them away.”

I crept the Duesy forward, and the crowd of reporters parted. I was almost through when a familiar voice said, “Well, well, well. Lola Duffy. What a
treat
.”

Duffy? My heart skittered like a gramophone needle.

“Hello, Miss Shanks,” I said. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly I heard my knuckles crack.

Ida Shanks heard them crack, too, and it made her smile.

I have a nemesis, and her name is Miss Ida Shanks. She is the society gossip columnist for the
New York Evening Observer,
and she has enjoyed a profitable career at, in part, my expense. Not a month has gone by without a wicked comment about me from this harpy, my identity disguised by only the flimsiest euphemistic veil. The trouble is, I'm on quicksand when it comes to Ida Shanks: she is one of the few people who knows that the DuFeys are really Duffys, and that before we made it to Park Avenue, our return address was 5 Polk Street, Scragg Springs, Indiana.

Ida knows these secrets, by the way, because
she's
from Scragg Springs, too.

Ida wore her usual getup: blue suit, moth-eaten fox fur, wilt-flowered hat, stockings that bagged around her sparrow's ankles, witchy boots. “Gadding about so soon after your dear departed helpmeet's demise?” she said.

“Gadding about?” I asked “Are we caught inside a P. G. Wodehouse novelette?”

“Who
is
this appalling creature?” Berta whispered to me.

“I have heard murmurs,” Ida said, “that your hubby's legacy was not so ample as one might've thought. No comment, Mrs. Woodby?” She dug a notebook and pencil from her dented satchel, and started scribbling. “Fortune,” she said, “has … flown … the … coop … for … formidable … society … doyenne.… Wait. Scratch that. No … ample … inheritance … for … ample … upper crust … matron.…”

The gates were flung wide by the gatekeeper. “Toodles, Miss Shanks,” I snarled.