Come Hell or Highball

by Maia Chance

  “Oh, I don’t know. Probably some jilted boyfriend.”

  Miss Potter? Jilted boyfriend? Hard to picture.

  “You don’t think it’s in any way linked to Horace’s … demise?”

  “Why would it be?” Olive puffed cigarette smoke. “It’s all a wretched bore, darling. I simply can’t wait till the police are done poking about. They’re completely in the way.”

  Apparently, Olive hadn’t heard that I was Suspect Number One. Yet.

  “How are Billy and Theo?” I asked.

  “Wonderful. They loathed Nanny Potter. My maid is looking after them now—they’re starting off for Maine this afternoon. She’s probably stuffing them with sweets, but I simply can’t be bothered about it. Let them be fat little dumplings. I give up.”

  “Are you returning to the city today?” I asked Eloise. A forty-mile drive with her wouldn’t be a cakewalk, but it would do the trick.

  “No,” Eloise said. “I plan to stay here and keep dear Olive company.”

  Rats.

  “Well, I must go mingle,” Olive said. She swayed off.

  “I’m famished,” I said, staring down into my fizzing glass. “Is there to be a luncheon?”

  “Oh, these motion picture people don’t really eat, dear,” Eloise said. “That must be difficult for a healthy girl like you to fathom.”

  Peachy. The conversation was once more careening in the direction of my undercarriage. “There is nothing wrong with a bit of pot roast or chocolate cake,” I said.

  “You do like your chocolate, don’t you?” Eloise sauntered away.

  Eloise was taking her divorce rather well. And, come to think of it, Olive seemed pretty cheery for a woman who’d not only buried her husband that morning, but whose nurserymaid had been murdered as well. Maybe it was shock.

  Or maybe it was something—or someone—else. I watched Bruno Luciano, dashing in white shirtsleeves and dark trousers, chatting with a fellow I recognized from the film studios. Bruno must’ve felt me gawking, because he glanced up. He came toward me.

  “Hello, Mr. Luciano,” I said.

  “Call me Bruno.”

  Thank heaven the movies were silent.

  “Dreadful business last night,” he said. “I understand you found the body?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. But I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Nobody would. Nasty little crime. I heard it was a jilted boyfriend.”

  Who had started that rumor?

  “Now everyone’s got their backs up,” he said. “Sadie refuses to film with me, but of course, that’s nothing new. Holed up in her room upstairs.”

  “Sadie Street is here?”

  “Yes. We’re supposed to film our scenes together, come hell or high water. George said he’s ready to break both of our contracts.”

  Bruno gave no sign that he knew about George’s deal with Lem Fitzpatrick. But then, Bruno was an actor.

  “George is around, too?” I asked.

  “Upstairs. Rubbing Sadie’s feet or something. Naturally, he’s only bluffing about my contract, but he means business with Sadie.”

  Interesting. Both Sadie and Eloise were currently in residence at Dune House. I ought to have a little poke-about in their rooms to see if either of them had the film reel in their luggage.

  I sipped my drink. “Oh, look,” I said. “Auntie Arbuckle.”

  Auntie stood by the drinks cabinet. She wore a long, old-fashioned black gown, complete with bustle. Her antique-granny image, however, was ruined by her brimming whiskey glass.

  “That old biddy is a real fright,” Bruno said. “Olive says she’s angry about her picture on the pork and beans cans. They say she hasn’t been right in the head after some kind of yachting accident.”

  Yachting accident? What about being dropped on her head as an infant? And having first cousins for parents?

  “By the way,” I said, “are you motoring back to the city today?”

  “No. We’re filming here for several more days.”

  Rats again.

  * * *

  The next time Hibbers passed by with a drinks tray, I took him aside. “Which bedroom is Sadie Street in?” I asked.

  “The bedroom overlooking the swimming pool, madam. The one you stayed in last weekend.”

  “And Eloise Wright?”

  “Two doors down from Miss Street’s room.” Hibbers paused. “Madam, might I be so bold as to caution you against making further inquiries regarding the … item you are searching for? There have been two murders, and although I cannot claim to have been greatly attached to either Mr. Arbuckle or Miss Potter, it would be a blow indeed if something were to happen to you.”

  “I can look after myself, Hibbers, but that’s awfully sweet of you to say.” Truth be told, I was worried something would happen to me. But I wasn’t about to admit to being a fraidy cat. I plucked a gin rickey from his tray and headed upstairs.

  Sadie’s room was first. I knocked on the door.

  “Go away!” she screamed inside.

  All right, then. I wouldn’t be searching her room.

  I went two doors down to Eloise Wright’s room. It was unlocked.

  Inside, everything was as neat as a pin. No gun, no film reel, no incriminating anything. Nothing of interest whatsoever except, hidden under a folded blouse in an open Louis Vuitton suitcase, a big pile of GooGoo Clusters in white-and-red wrappers.

  Well, well.

  Don’t get me wrong—GooGoo Clusters are lumps of chocolate and marshmallow divinity. But let me put it this way: They went with a Louis Vuitton suitcase the way a tractor goes with a ballroom.

  With great effort, I backed away from the GooGoo Clusters, and tiptoed downstairs.

  * * *

  The party migrated outside to the swimming pool. The morning had warmed up and the mist had burned away.

  I parked myself on one of the teak lounges in the shade of the house. I sipped a drink, and willed that somebody I knew would show up so I could get back to the city.

  Some of the movie people had changed into bathing costumes. They splashed and squealed in the pool. Hibbers wheeled the gramophone onto the pool deck, and a maid came around with a tray of fresh cocktails.

  This wasn’t so bad, was it?

  My gaze drifted to a hedge beyond the swimming pool. I started upright, sending my drink slopping.

  A row of reporters peeked over the hedge. They wore trilby hats and brandished cameras. In the thick of the reporters was Miss Ida Shanks. I’d know that wilty-flowered hat anywhere.

  She grinned at me.

  I heaved myself off the lounge and went in search of Hibbers again. I found him in the butler’s pantry.

  “Did you know there’s a whole army of reporters on the property?” I asked.

  “Indeed, madam. Mrs. Arbuckle instructed the gatekeeper to allow them in. They have even been so audacious as to use the lavatory in the carriage house, I am told.”

  “Why on earth would Olive allow them to intrude?”

  “I could not say, madam.”

  But I knew the answer: Olive wanted her name and photograph splashed in the movie magazines.

  I returned to the poolside lounge chair. I still held out hope that an acquaintance would turn up. An acquaintance with an especially cushy motorcar.

  I lay my head back and stared up gloomily at the house above me, the stone facade, the gargoyles aloft, the blue sky. How silly, really, for a house in Long Island to have gargoyles. My eyelids sagged.

  Then they flew open.

  One of the gargoyles was … moving.

  I jumped up. My glass went flying. I stumbled on my own flat-shoed feet and went face-first into the swimming pool.

  I was swallowed up in cold blue, and everything sounded gurgly and muted. When I burst back to the surface, my ears were filled with shrieks.

  I wiped water from my eyes and looked over at the lounge chair. Splintered teak jutted up around a three-foot-tall gargoyle, stone wings spread,
snout leering.

  Drunken yelping, dashing about, and general pandemonium ensued. Even though I was the one who’d nearly been smashed to death by a gargoyle, two flappers in bathing costumes were in hysterics. Nobody had turned off the gramophone, which was now dinging out Jelly Roll Morton.

  I dragged myself out of the pool.

  I stood shivering for a few moments. Water puddled around my spectator shoes. My sopping pullover felt like lead. Then Hibbers appeared with a highball.

  “Madam,” he said.

  “Did I ever tell you you’re the cat’s pajamas, Hibbers?” I took a sip. Water dripped off the tip of my nose.

  “On more than one occasion, madam.” Hibbers left.

  I found a towel and blotted my hair.

  “Here, let me help you.” A puffy towel enfolded me. I found myself gazing up into Bruno Luciano’s ravishing mug.

  “Thanks,” I said. I tipped my chin.

  Maybe it was the pose. Maybe it was only the booze. But for a second, I was Jane Eyre gazing up at Mr. Rochester.

  “That gargoyle nearly fell on top of you,” Bruno said. His hamster voice shattered the silver screen moment. “Could I get you anything? Hot tea?”

  “I think I’ll go…” I’d almost said, go home. But I didn’t have a home anymore.

  The fright of the falling gargoyle finally clobbered me. Tears sprang to my eyes. My whole, soggy body went trembly.

  “There, there,” Bruno murmured. He wrapped an arm around me.

  “I’ll go find my motorcar out front,” I said. Bartell was waiting somewhere. I’d take a hot bath at Amberley and cook up a new escape strategy.

  “I’ll escort you to your motorcar, then.”

  Bruno guided me along. He had his arm around my shoulders to keep the towel on, and he carried my highball. What a gent.

  We rounded the corner of the house.

  Smack into Miss Ida Shanks.

  Now, usually, Ida scribbled in her notebook while some potbellied sidekick snapped the photographs. But this time, she was doing the camera-snapping. At me.

  “Taken up photography, Miss Shanks?” I said. “Expanding your horizons?” I pushed past her.

  “It rather looks like you are expanding your horizons, Duffy—or is it merely that you’re wearing flat shoes?” Ida lowered her camera lens and snapped a picture of my ankles.

  I barged across the side lawn. Bruno scurried at my side, still managing to hold the towel around me and hold my highball.

  We reached the front drive. A battered brown Model T idled in the driveway. Berta roosted in the passenger seat with Cedric on her lap. I caught a glimpse of Ralph through the windshield.

  “There she is!” I heard Berta say. She rolled down the window. “Mrs. Woodby!” she yelled. “Come quickly! The gatekeeper told us not to enter, but I instructed Mr. Oliver to gun it when—”

  The rest of her words were lost under the roar of Ralph revving the Model T’s engine.

  I turned to Bruno. “Thanks ever so much, Bruno. You’re an absolute peach. Give Olive my regards, won’t you?” I shrugged off the towel and placed it in his arms.

  His face looked almost … boyish. “But when will I see you again, Lola—may I call you Lola?”

  “Sure.” I felt Berta’s and Ralph’s eyes boring into the back of my head.

  “You’re a…” Bruno’s face softened. “You’re a real girl, Lola. I don’t meet real girls like you too often anymore. I’d love to see you again. Would you give me your telephone number?”

  “Well, I—”

  He delivered another heart-stopping Mr. Rochester look.

  “It’ll be listed under Alfred Woodby,” I said. “In Washington Square. But don’t tell anybody where I’m staying, all right?”

  “Why would I do a thing like that?” Bruno ambled away.

  Had the world-famous Latin Lothario really asked me—me?—for my telephone number? While I was wearing flat shoes, no less?

  The horn beeped.

  “Are you coming, Mrs. Woodby?” Berta yelled.

  I roused myself from my dazzle and clambered—still soaking wet—into the backseat of the Model T.

  25

  “I did so hope we would find you here,” Berta said as we tooled down the drive. “We waited for you at the funeral, but you never arrived. Why in heaven are you all wet? And what was Mr. Luciano saying to you?”

  “Yeah,” Ralph said. “I’ve gotta hear this.”

  “To begin with, I had a brush with death,” I said.

  Berta gave a cry. Cedric propped his front paws on the seat back, and I lifted him over. I burrowed my face in his warm fluff. He licked my face. “Why does Cedric feel so heavy?” I asked. I heaved him up and down like a dumbbell. “What have you two been feeding him?”

  “What about this brush with death?” Ralph glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were filled with concern. Not picturesque chivalry, as Bruno Luciano had displayed; Ralph’s eyes were keener, and sort of bruised. “Are you kidding?”

  “No, I’m not kidding. And don’t look at me like that, because you’re on my X-List. Permanently.” Humiliation about L.W. kiss in cinema check still stewed on the back burner of my mind. More pertinently, I was abuzz with the suspicion that Chisholm had hired Ralph to spy on me. But I couldn’t let those things boil over. Too much was happening. Besides, it looked like Ralph was my ride back to Manhattan.

  “X-List?” He chuckled. “Okay, I think I can live with that.” He steered through the gates and took a right onto the coastal road.

  “What happened?” Berta asked.

  I described how the gargoyle had come crashing down onto my teak lounge, and how I’d tripped into the swimming pool.

  “Hang on a minute,” Ralph said. “You’re saying the gargoyle just fell?”

  “What are you suggesting? That someone pushed the gargoyle?”

  “Seems more likely than it simply falling, wouldn’t you say?”

  I felt icy cold. “Someone tried to … kill me?”

  “Does that come as a surprise,” Berta said, “considering the events of last night?”

  “You heard, then. About Miss Potter,” I said.

  “You forget we were staying at the Foghorn with all of those newspaper and magazine reporters,” Berta said. “For them, a murder is a feast.”

  “Who was at that party back there?” Ralph asked. “Who could’ve pushed the gargoyle?”

  I racked my brains. It wasn’t easy. What I hadn’t drunk in coffee that morning, I’d made up for in giggle juice. “Well, honestly, I didn’t know most of them. They were motion picture people, mainly. Olive was there, of course. And Eloise Wright—she’s divorcing her husband, by the way. Sadie Street and George Zucker were in the house somewhere, but I didn’t see them.”

  “Horace’s family?” Ralph asked.

  “Not that I know of … wait. Yes. Auntie Arbuckle.”

  “What about Luciano?” Ralph said. “Could he have pushed it?”

  “After he’s been so chivalrous! I’ll bet you’re jealous.” The truth was, Bruno could have pushed it. He’d been out of my sight, anyway, at the right time. But why would he want to bop me off?

  “Jealous? Naw.” Ralph’s shoulders were rigid.

  “No woman can resist Mr. Luciano,” Berta said. “I read about it in Movie Love.”

  “What?” I said. “Well, maybe as long as he keeps clammed up.”

  Ralph snorted.

  Berta swiveled around. “Mr. Oliver is suspicious only because Mr. Luciano is a motion picture star, and you are, well … oh dear me. You are not going to cry, are you?”

  “I want to change into some dry clothes and have a cup of coffee,” I mumbled into Cedric’s fur.

  * * *

  We motored into Hare’s Hollow. The Model T shuddered to a stop in front of the Foghorn.

  I took my suitcase and handbag, which Berta had jammed in the backseat, and went to change in the washroom off the lobby. I moved Sadie Street’s lipstick from m
y skirt pocket to my handbag. My dip in the pool didn’t seem to have damaged it.

  It was a relief to be back in dry clothes. And in mascara, lipstick, and high-heeled shoes. There wasn’t much I could do about my beaver-lodge hair.

  I met Berta, Ralph, and Cedric in the Foghorn’s crowded restaurant.

  Between bites of gristly pork chops, oversalted scalloped potatoes, damp string beans, and sludge-strong coffee, I described how I’d arranged the meeting with Vera Potter, and how I’d heard the gunshot and found Miss Potter’s body in the dunes.

  “Vera Potter had a gun?” Ralph said. “It could’ve been for her own protection, but maybe she meant to shoot you.”

  “I know,” I said. Would it cause a scene if I catapulted string beans at him with my spoon?

  “Perhaps she carried the gun because she indeed knew something about the film reel,” Berta said. “Perhaps, Mrs. Woodby, she intended to kill you because of whatever secret the reel holds.”

  Fear made me fork up my potatoes with gusto.

  “We must unmask the murderer before you are killed,” Berta said.

  “What about you? You’re as deep into this as I am.”

  “Indeed, but I am told I have an innocent face. No one would suspect me of having anything to do with murders and stolen film reels.”

  “That reminds me,” Ralph said. “I got ahold of my junk-dealer buddy, Prince, last night. He told me the fleur-de-lis mark on the film canister was the imprint of a now-defunct film company out of New Rochelle. Pinnacle Productions. They made news reels, advertisements, that sort of thing.”

  “News reels?” I said.

  “How peculiar,” Berta said. “I was certain the film contained filth.”

  “Inspector Digton wants to arrest me, by the way,” I said. I explained the chummy deal Chisholm had struck with Inspector Digton. “But you, Mr. Oliver, probably already know all about that, don’t you?” I speared a potato without taking my eyes off Ralph.

  But Ralph seemed genuinely surprised. “Chisholm?” he said. “You mean your brother-in-law? What’s it to him?”

  “You mean he didn’t hire you?” I said.

  “Nope. And it doesn’t sound like he’d need a private eye, anyway, if he’s got the police force doing his dirty work for him.”