Come Hell or Highball (6 page)

I was about to hit the gas pedal when the reporters erupted in a tizzy. Ida craned her neck.

Berta and I swiveled in our seats. A glossy black Rolls-Royce pulled up behind us. The reporters swarmed. The driver of the Rolls beeped the horn.

“The chauffeur honks at you, Mrs. Woodby,” Berta said. “Get a move on.”

“‘Get a move on'?” I whizzed through the gates. “Tell me again, when did you take up speaking like a gangster?”

Berta compressed her lips.

We drove up the tree-lined drive. The Rolls was hot on my fender.

Dune House came into view. Four mammoth wings, slate roofs, and five towering chimneys mimicked an English baronial hall. An ornate iron railing ran along the roofline like a high lace collar. Stone gargoyles lurked at the edges of the gutters. Windowpanes sparkled in the early evening sunlight. Despite its aged style, Dune House was brand-spanking new and had been paid for, I suspected, mainly with proceeds from Auntie Arbuckle's Pork and Beans.

Several luxurious motorcars were parked in the white gravel drive, and more sat next to a stone garage large enough to house an army. I'd been to Dune House before, of course, and I knew that out back were tennis courts, a swimming pool, a hedge maze, stables, riding paths through the trees, and, about a quarter mile away, a stretch of beach fronting the sound.

I motored to a stop. The Rolls braked behind me. Two menservants, trussed up in double-breasted livery jackets, came down the walkway. I waited for one of them to open my door. Nothing happened. I spun around in my seat.

“Cheeky!” I said. The footmen were opening the Rolls-Royce's doors.

Berta turned around, too.

We goggled without shame.

“I've never seen a motion picture star,” I said. “Not in person, I mean.”

“Such a fuss,” Berta said. Her eyes were glued to the Rolls.

A pair of slim girl's calves came into view. Then the whole girl emerged.

“Sadie Street, I'd guess,” I said.

Sadie wasn't, I had gathered from Olive Arbuckle, exactly a film star. Yet. But she looked the part. She had a lovely face and lithe flapper's figure, dolphin-hipped and bosom-free, in a pale blue tube of a dress. Her flaxen bob came to curled points against her pale cheeks, under a blue hat.

“Oh, shut up, George,” Sadie said, marching up the front walk. “I told you a thousand times, I'm awful tired of hearing about lighting and scripts and things!”

A man surfaced from the other side of the Rolls. He was short and dapper, wearing a three-piece suit. He had dark eyes and a trim gray beard. A pleasant face, yet long-suffering, like a schnauzer who needs to go for a walk.

Berta and I levered ourselves out of the Duesy. Berta went off to find the servants' entrance. Cedric and I went to the front door.

Hibbers was there to greet me.

“Oh, hello,” I said to him. My voice had the hurt wobble of a jilted debutante.

“Mrs. Woodby,” he said with a bow. He cast a regal smile down to Cedric. Cedric wiped his lips on Hibbers's trouser leg.

I stepped into the entrance hall. I was about to introduce myself to Sadie Street and George Zucker when Olive descended upon us. Then I was caught in a tsunami of shrill greetings, air kisses, and bony hugs.

Oh boy. Three seconds inside Dune House, and I was already daydreaming about an extra-thick slab of chocolate mousse cake.

“Where's the pie-faced simp?” Sadie Street said as soon as Olive finished the introductions.

“If you mean Bruno, he's sunning himself by the swimming pool, darling,” Olive said. “Perhaps you ought to pop into your bathing costume, too, and join him. Nothing like a little fresh air and sunshine to—”

“Where's my room?” Sadie said. Then, to George, “I
told
you I couldn't bear it if everyone was going to push me to talk with Mr. Pipsqueak. And for God's sake, George, would you stop pawing at my arm?” She swished toward the stairs. “I suppose my room is upstairs somewhere?”

For a moment, Olive's face fell. But she plastered on a smile—remembering, probably, that Sadie was going to be a big star—and scurried after her.

“Nasty piece of fluff,” George muttered.

Whew! What a way to talk about your main squeeze.

“Sadie and Bruno,” George said to me as we followed Hibbers up the stairs, “—you've heard of Bruno Luciano?”

“Sure. Brightest new movie star of the year, the papers all say.”

“Sadie and Bruno are under contract to co-star in three pictures together. Production gets under way on the first one, and whaddaya know? They decide two weeks ago, when we start filming
Jane Eyre,
that they can't stand the sight of each other.”

“
Jane Eyre
?” I asked. “Sadie Street will play Jane?”

“She's pretty convincing once she's got the wig and everything on.”

Mental memo: Skip that picture.

“The two of them have refused, flat out, to work together,” George said. “Pantheon's investors are furious. I've got to get them to see eye to eye or we'll be in the hole.”

“Couldn't you hire different actors?”

“No. They're under contract.”

“Aren't they breaking the contract themselves, by refusing to work?”

George shook his head. “There are intricacies. Complications. No. They gotta be reconciled. And firing Bruno is absolutely out of the question. Didn't you see
The King of Sheba
last fall?”

“The picture where Mr. Luciano was wearing a turban and all that kohl under his eyes?”

“Yep. That was the most profitable picture of 1922! We can't let him go. Some other production company will snap him up. Pantheon needs him.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe everything will get sorted this weekend.”

“It's got to. The investors have given me a week to patch things up, or else it's curtains for Sadie.”

“Highball,”
I mouthed to Hibbers when he glanced in my direction.

 

6

As soon as Hibbers left me in my room—a lofty affair with Olde Englishe replica furniture—Cedric leapt from my arms and began sniffing about.

I went to the windows. Outside, the swimming pool glittered in the early evening sun, surrounded by topiary trees. Only one person was out there, lolling facedown on a teak lounge. A man, long and sun-bronzed, with a well-muscled physique and dark, curling hair, wearing small white bathing trunks. Bruno Luciano.

I was about to turn away from the window when a manservant stepped into view beside the pool. He carried a tray with a drink on it. Something about his swagger caught my eye.

The manservant bent down beside Bruno. Bruno said something without lifting his face. The manservant placed the drink on the table beside Bruno's lounge, and straightened.

Then he looked right up to my window.

Well, well. Mr. Ralph Oliver.

My fingernails clawed into the drapes.

Ralph tucked the tray under his arm, grinned up at me. And winked. I snapped the drapes shut.

*   *   *

Hibbers arrived with my highball minutes later.

“Thanks,” I said after a bracing swallow. “Nectar of the gods.”

“You are very kind, madam.” He turned to go.

“Wait,” I said. “Is there any new help here at Dune House? Besides you, I mean.”

“Not as such, although Mrs. Arbuckle has hired a few extra servants for the weekend. From a temporary staffing agency. She did not wish for her motion picture guests to want for anything. Shall I take Cedric for a perambulation on the lawns, and then a light repast in the kitchen, madam?”

“Oh, that would be wonderful. I'll dig up his leash.”

Moments later, Cedric frisked away with Hibbers without so much as a backward glance.

I sipped my highball and fumed while I dressed for dinner. Obviously, Ralph Oliver was here at Dune House because
I
was. But he'd beat me here. Which meant that he hadn't followed me. He'd known I was coming to Dune House in advance, so must have overheard my conversation with Ruby Simpkin last night at the Frivolities.

And
that
meant he was investigating something to do with Alfie selling that film reel to Horace Arbuckle. Or else, he was really investigating
me
.

Either way,
phooey
.

I wriggled and buckled myself into a long girdle. I pulled on black silk stockings, clipped them to my garters, and straightened my seams. I chose jet-beaded François Pinet high heels and a slinky black evening gown with a plunging neckline. I might not have a swizzle stick build, but with the right brassiere, my décolleté is probably worth writing home about. I caught myself wondering if Ralph Oliver would approve.

I gave myself a mental slap and polished off my highball. Then I patched up my mascara and lipstick, and headed downstairs.

I decided to make a detour past Horace's study. Maybe I could weasel in there, somehow pry open the safe, get the film reel, and be gone. On the way, I half hoped I'd bump into Mr. Oliver so I could give him a piece of my mind.

No dice; I didn't see a soul.

The study door stood about four inches open, and the room was lit up inside. I peeked in with one eye.

Zowie. I blinked. Was that really—? Yes. It was.

Horace Arbuckle was half-sprawled on his desk, in the throes of some kind of amorous tangle with a lady. She was crouched, and there were a lot of pink, fleshy limbs. Horace grunted, and I saw a lady's flushed face, framed in gray hair.

I ran away down the hallway so fast, I almost turned an ankle.

*   *   *

When I arrived in the drawing room, only Hibbers was there.

He glided past button-tufted furniture, palms potted in Ming, and tasteful bric-a-brac to deliver a highball to me. “Madam.”

“Oh brother,” I said. “I really oughtn't start on a second one yet.” I took it, anyway. I needed something to erase the image of Horace Arbuckle Greco-Roman wrestling with that lady. “Where is everyone else?”

“The Arbuckle household, madam, runs on an exceptionally late schedule.”

“I'll go outside and putter around a little, then. Thanks, Hibbers.”

Outside on the flagstone terrace, the night air tasted of salt, and stars dappled the sky. The lawn was dark, except for rectangles of light shining down from the house's windows. Beyond the lawn stood a tall, shadowy hedge.

I gasped. Dark figures crept across the far edge of the lawn, along the base of the hedge. I squinted. Yes. Three figures. I heard a woman's voice. Heavy breathing. Was the woman barking …
commands
? The figures veered left and moved into a rectangle of light on the lawn.

Maybe I'd drunk one highball too many. Because what I
thought
I saw, galumphing toward me, were two roly-poly young boys driven along by a lady with some kind of stick.

The lady was twenty-odd years old, rail-thin, with a ferret's face pulled taut by a bun. The boys, of course, were Olive and Horace's progeny, Billy and Theo. They wore shorts, tennis shirts, and canvas tennis shoes that glowed in the half light. Yet their pudgy midriffs and doughy knees were a far cry from those of tennis players. Poor dears.

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Woodby,” the elder boy, Billy, said, panting. He stopped at the base of the terrace steps.

“Hello, Billy,” I said. “Out for a spot of exercise?”

“Billy!” the lady barked. “March!”

“Is that your … trainer?” I whispered to Billy.

“Nanny Potter,” he said miserably. Then he was off, with Theo and Nanny Potter right behind.

“Fat little things,” Olive said, sidling up to me.

I jumped.

Olive glistened, long and narrow, in a green beaded evening gown. She held a venomous-looking cocktail. “Take after their father. I do my absolute
utmost
to slim them, I swear, but it's hopeless. They always scrounge things up, somehow. If Cook serves them broth and boiled turnips for dinner, they turn around and hit up the chauffeur for chocolate bars. If Nanny Potter drives them for an extra lap in the evening, Cook tells me an entire bowl of custard has gone missing from the icebox.” She sipped her drink. “I keep them locked up now.”

My eyes widened. “Your children?”

“No, no. The icebox, and the pantry. Oh, do look. Eloise has finally come down. You know Eloise Wright, don't you?”

I turned.

And promptly choked on my drink. I was face-to-face with the lady I'd seen writhing with Horace in his study.

“Oh, hello,” I said, extending my hand. “How lovely to meet you, Mrs. Wright.”

In fact, I already knew Eloise Wright by reputation, since we swam in the same social circles. But I'd never actually seen her until that discomfiting instant in Horace's study.

Eloise was the very definition of a Society Matron: partridge plump, draped in a square acre of lilac chiffon, upswept steel-wool hair, tremulous diamond earrings, posture of a war general.

“Eloise is the Girdle Queen,” Olive said to me after introductions. “Haven't you heard? She's grown quite famous.”

“Oh, she exaggerates,” Eloise said. “I've only got a little business, tucked away inside Gerald's Fifth Avenue store.”

“Gerald is her husband, of course,” Olive said. She gestured with her drink. Inside the drawing room, Horace Arbuckle (now, thank goodness, fully clothed) was speaking with a puny fellow in a too-big evening jacket. Gerald Wright had Coca-Cola bottle glasses, an amphibious face, and a bald spot. “
You
know, Lola. Gerald Wright. Of Wright's Department Stores.”

“Of course,” I said. “I simply adore Wright's.” I
used
to adore it, anyway. I no longer had enough cabbage to shop there.

“Horace and Gerald are in business together,” Olive said. “Horace sells a line of fancy tinned things—pâté and caviar and so on—in the food halls at the Wright's stores.”