Her romantic entanglements with a procession of men claiming to hold sway at one studio or another were a reliable source of entertainment. “No more swimming for me, mermaid,” she’d say as she dolled herself up before the cracked mirror in our room. “My ship has come in.” She always wound up back in the water soon enough. Ruby would simply reapply her war paint and target her next prospective meal ticket.
A gift-wrapping position at Tremayne’s Department Store during the Christmas season led to a permanent job offer. I accepted, with vague plans of someday being promoted to buyer. I didn’t weep for my stillborn acting career. You can’t give up a dream you never really had.
My newfound sense of responsibility blew a chill into my relationship with Ruby. I couldn’t help her anymore, even if only by faring worse than she was. I was merely a warm body taking up the other forty percent of the room.
Ruby had made a science of persevering. She landed a few chorus or background parts thanks mainly to her dancing. Our Miss Johnnycake could cut a mean rug. In the meantime she had the typical stints as waitress, stenographer, switchboard operator. For a few days, she’d give the position her all. Then she’d start slipping out early for auditions or sneaking in late because she’d been gallivanting with her current beau until 2:00 A.M. Sooner or later, usually sooner, she’d be out of a job.
About two months after I moved in with her, Ruby met Tommy Carpa. Too Much Tommy, we called him, everything about him excessive. His stocky frame, his profusion of black hair forever tumbling into his hooded eyes, his cashmere overcoats and extravagant gestures. He owned a second-rate nightclub called the Midnight Room and kept unsavory company. He never claimed to have pull at any studio. Ruby didn’t care. Tommy gave her entrée to swanky Hollywood parties.
I didn’t like Tommy, and made the tactical error of telling Ruby so. She called me jealous. Maybe she was right. Maybe I wouldn’t have objected to being squired around town by a sharpie in an almost-new Packard. But I still didn’t trust the guy.
Tommy was the first substantial rift between us. The next one was personal, portable, and irreparable.
* * *
THE BROOCH WAS a simple piece, nothing special. Two intertwined gold circles set with garnets. Paulette Goddard would have turned up her perfect nose at it.
But for me, it had worth beyond measure.
My uncle Danny presented the brooch to me on my sixteenth birthday. We were sitting at the kitchen table after dinner. I was itching to leave for my friend Peggy’s house but Uncle Danny asked me to wait. From his bedroom he retrieved a scuffed jewelry box.
“Before your mother passed, she gave this to me for safekeeping. She said to give it to you when you became a young lady.” His face held its usual smile, but his eyes were fogged with memory. “I think you’ve become a fine young lady indeed.”
I opened the box, the lid snapping as if new. The brooch felt weighted and warm in my hand, like it had been recently worn. All at once my mother was there with us, a presence in the tiny kitchen that smelled of ham steaks and turnips.
I fetched a pale blue scarf and tied it around my neck. With his thick fingers, Uncle Danny pinned on the brooch. “Very elegant,” he said, and at that moment I didn’t feel like a girl anymore. I never made it to Peggy’s house that night. I sat drinking milk and eating graham crackers while Uncle Danny told me stories about his spirited sister Maureen. The mother I remembered only as a jolly laugh, a snatch of lullaby, a whiff of lavender.
I never wore the brooch, but after moving to Los Angeles I would take it out and gather my few recollections of my mother. On one of those long, lonely nights I didn’t hear Ruby coming down the hall. Staggering tipsily to her bed, she caught an eyeful of the brooch. “Where’d you get that bauble?”
“Just a family heirloom. Not much of one at that.” Feeling silly, I tucked the brooch back in my drawer under some clothes.
A week later I was putting away some freshly washed stockings when I felt ritually for the box and discovered it wasn’t there. I tore our room apart searching. I looked in jacket pockets, inside shoes, the unlikeliest places. Then I went through all of Ruby’s things. The brooch was gone.
Devastated, I waited up until Ruby tottered home. She bristled at my touching her possessions, said she didn’t even remember the brooch, and fell asleep. She stuck to that story over oatmeal the next morning, swearing up and down that she hadn’t taken it, hurt that I thought she could have.
I knew she was lying. Ruby had picked up a few tricks in her acting classes, but she couldn’t fool me. She’d borrowed the brooch without permission then decided she liked it. Or maybe she dropped it while fumbling with Tommy in the backseat of his car. That was what upset me the most, not the possibility that the only memento from a woman I had never known was lost forever but that it had disappeared in so cavalier a fashion. I wouldn’t let the matter rest, finally telling Ruby I’d forgive her if she’d misplaced it as long as she admitted she’d taken it.
“What do you keep going on about it for?” she said, exasperated. “Maybe you misplaced it. Maybe somebody else who lives in this dump helped themselves to it. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.”
Uncle Danny once told me you couldn’t truly hate someone unless you’d liked them first. You had to let them under your skin.
I avoided Ruby as much as possible after that, giving her the silent treatment whenever I couldn’t. When I heard about the open apartment nearby I jumped on it, the salary I’d been squirreling away now a godsend. I never said anything to Ruby, but my packing had to be a dead giveaway. On my last morning in the boardinghouse we sat at opposite ends of the breakfast table without a word to each other.
Friendships in Hollywood never last, Ruby once advised me. Another valuable lesson. At least she’d given me fair warning.
3
“SHE SOUNDS LIKE some piece of work, this Ruby.” Morrow holstered his notebook inside his jacket.
“She wasn’t all bad.”
“Coming between a girl and her mother’s memory? Did other girls in the house have items go missing?”
“The ones who’d roomed with Ruby before me had the same problem.” I frowned. “A little advance notice would have been appreciated.”
“You’re a stout judge of character if you didn’t care for Tommy Carpa.”
“You know him?”
Morrow nodded. “Guy’s an operator.”
Hansen clucked from the other side of the room, evidently favoring stronger language.
“First time we’ve heard his name in connection to Miss Carroll,” Morrow said. “No one at the boardinghouse mentioned him.”
“He may be out of the picture by now. I didn’t keep up with Ruby’s social calendar.”
“Right. Six months since you last saw her.” Morrow eyed Hansen. “Figure a call on Tommy is in order?”
“Tonight,” Hansen said. “When his club’s open and his high-hat pals are in attendance.” He chuckled, the sound like a match strike near dry brush.
“The newspaper said Ruby was wearing an evening gown and a lot of jewelry.”
“They laid it on a bit thick to play up the Alley Angel angle,” Morrow said. “The jewelry was paste, costume stuff. Now the dress was something. Looked pricey to me, but what do I know? You work in a department store. Maybe you’d have an idea.”
“I can tell you Ruby never had her share of the rent on time. The gown could have been a gift from an admirer. She did tend to collect men friends.”
“Maybe the Shark bought the duds for her,” Hansen said.
I turned to him. “The Shark?”
“Carpa. Fair-sized fish fancies himself a bigger one. Still a minnow swimming in Mickey Cohen’s wake, but growing bigger all the time.”
The gambit was a long shot, but I played it anyway. “Perhaps if I saw the gown, I could tell you something about it.”
“You’d be willing to do that?” Morrow asked.
“If there’s any chance I coul
d give you an idea of when and where Ruby got it.”
Morrow nodded thoughtfully. “Sure. And while you’re at it, you could take a gander at Ruby’s jewelry. Look for that pilfered brooch of yours.”
I felt my skin flush. “You saw right through me.”
“Yes, Miss Frost. Truth be told, it wasn’t that mighty a challenge.” Now, though, he seemed to be weighing the idea’s merits. “It couldn’t hurt to have you look at the dress. And at the station I could scrounge up enough chairs for everybody.”
We made quite the procession heading toward the escalators, the curious faces of the other salesgirls staring after us. My notoriety had spread across the second floor, and I was the center of attention. For an instant, I felt like Ruby.
* * *
THE POLICE STATION did not live up to my expectations. No gaggle of wisecracking reporters, nary an immigrant mother begging to visit her son before he went up the river. The movies had deceived me again.
Hansen lingered in the parking lot to crack knuckles with another detective. Morrow escorted me inside, shouldering a door marked ROBBERY HOMICIDE DIVISION. The masculine aroma beyond, a potent combination of sweat, smoke, and hair tonic, nearly KO’d me. Shirtsleeved men raised their heads as we walked by. Behind me I heard, “Nice going, Gene. Got one for me?”
Morrow sat me down next to a desk that, compared to the others we’d passed, was immaculate. He placed a folder in front of me.
“What’s this?” I already knew the answer. Photographs of Ruby in the alley behind Keshek’s Meat Market, lifeless in black and white.
“You said you could identify Ruby’s clothes.”
“Yes, but I thought you’d show me the clothes themselves.”
“Either you recognize them or you don’t,” Hansen said, the bad penny turning up again.
“With a picture there’s no way to see the fabric’s color, examine the … the warp and weft.” That sounded almost believable, even to me.
Morrow gave me a skeptical look and then walked Hansen over to a bank of file cabinets, out of earshot. I occupied myself with an inventory of his desk. One smudged ashtray, empty if not clean. A second ashtray containing a battered baseball, the sole indication of a life beyond this office. No photographs of a new bride posing by the sleeping car in her going-away suit, or a fresh-faced kid with a soapbox derby trophy. And no reason for me to be cataloguing clues about Detective Morrow’s marital status.
I got the impression the partners were disagreeing. Maybe it was the way Hansen kept shaking his head and scowling before finally stalking off.
Morrow returned. “Detective Hansen is retrieving the clothes from Evidence. He doubts the trip will be worth it.” He slipped the file of photos back into his desk. “I think we should adjourn to an interview room. The clothes may be more upsetting to you than the photographs would have been.”
My new surroundings made the stockroom at Tremayne’s look like a suite at the Beverly Wilshire. A dim overhead bulb spilled weak light over two chairs and a table that had recently hosted a mumblety-peg tournament. Hansen skulked in with a cardboard box. Morrow opened it while Hansen stood sentry in the corner.
“One pair of sandals.” Morrow deposited the shoes on the table.
“Silver kid high-heeled sandals with rhinestone buckles,” I said.
Morrow scarcely faltered. “One white evening gown.”
“White silk, with tulle overlay trimmed in fur.” I glimpsed a dark stain on the dress and averted my gaze, studying the rest of the garment. It was gorgeous, intricately designed. I could envision Ruby wearing it with startling ease. She would have looked like a million bucks that night. She would have looked like a movie star.
“Your expert opinion, Miss Frost?” Morrow asked.
“It’s a stunner, all right. Certainly not cheap. Is there a label in it?”
“It was cut off. Do you recognize the dress?”
“That’s the queer part. I do and I don’t. I feel like I’ve seen it, but not on Ruby.”
“Maybe on a hanger at the store.”
“Tremayne’s doesn’t carry anything like this.”
“How can you be sure?” Hansen addressed the table, not me. “You don’t work in Dresses. We found you in … the other department.”
His spasm of manners was slightly endearing. “I know our stock. I have to.”
“All of it?” Morrow looked dubious. “And where else would you have seen it? You spending your evenings at the Trocadero?”
He made a valid point, but I couldn’t shake the certainty that the ivory gown was familiar. The explanation flickered maddeningly at the edge of my thoughts.
Morrow placed his hands on the cardboard box like a teacher at a lectern. “Tell me again, when did you start at Tremayne’s?”
“Last Christmas.”
“Gift-wrapping,” Hansen said, finding the notion amusing.
“And that led to your current position? In … the other department?”
“Yes.” We were no longer discussing the clothes. My stomach soured. This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped.
“At least the job allowed you to find your own place. You live alone, is that right? Dangerous out there for a girl on her own.”
I gestured at the bloodstain on Ruby’s gown without looking at it. “It would appear so.”
“Getting back to this dress from Tremayne’s—”
“I never said that. This dress is not—I don’t think it’s from Tremayne’s.”
Morrow raised a calming hand. “For the sake of argument, let’s assume it is. And Ruby was in her usual dire financial straits. If she wanted this dress, how could she get it from the store?”
“Steal it,” Hansen fairly spat.
“Wouldn’t be easy,” Morrow said. “Not with all those salesladies watching. Wouldn’t you agree, Miss Frost?”
I may have blinked in response. I hadn’t been whipped around so fast since riding the Thunderbolt at Coney Island.
“She’d need help,” Morrow continued. “Someone allowed to handle the merchandise.”
“A booster in sheep’s clothing,” Hansen said. “Taking home a paycheck and whatever catches her eye.”
“Hold on.” My voice was back, bringing my indignation with it. “Are you accusing me of … of stealing clothes? For Ruby? Why would I do that? We weren’t friends anymore.”
“Big falling out.” Hansen, damn him, was still directing his comments at the scarred tabletop. “Hadn’t spoken in six months.”
“Unless it wasn’t quite that long.” From his jacket pocket, Morrow removed an envelope. From that envelope, he extracted a scrap of newspaper. Even before he laid it on the table I spotted the curlicued “T” of Tremayne’s, the elegantly elongated “Y.” “We found this in Ruby’s dresser. Do you see why it would strike us as interesting?”
The advertisement, from eight weeks earlier, trumpeted the store’s new fall gowns in the Parisian style. Directly beneath the date was “Lillian, 2nd floor” in Ruby’s schoolgirl script. I could picture the pink nib of her tongue protruding as she concentrated on her penmanship.
The detectives’ visit to the store made perfect sense now, their willingness to have me inspect Ruby’s last possessions even more so. They’d known I was lying.
Look ’em in the eye, mermaid.
I did. “We had lunch.”
“When?”
I pointed at the advertisement. “Shortly after that ran.”
“Why not tell us that before?”
“Because I like my job. I want to keep it.”
“Miss Frost, I don’t care about your job. I want to know about Ruby.”
“But now you won’t believe me.” I scanned his face for a sign I was mistaken and came up empty.
“I’ll decide when I hear what you have to say.” He crossed his arms. “Tell me about this lunch.”
Ruby had gotten me into this mess. To get out of it, I did the one thing she’d been incapable of doing. I came clean.
<
br /> 4
ON THAT TUESDAY—already I was thinking of it as the Tuesday in question—I was tidying up the hat display after a particularly brutal matron had dervished through it when I heard a familiar voice.
“Excuse me, miss? I’m looking for something in straw for the donkey I left double-parked downstairs. Maybe one with holes for his ears?”
I sighed and faced Ruby. My first thought was how good she looked. She’d abandoned the dye bottle, her blond hair back to its natural lustrous russet. She wore a deep red silk dress, the shade suiting her darker locks and contrasting with her ivory skin. Very dramatic. Very Ruby.
“You were interested in dressing an ass?” I asked sweetly.
“That, and making silk purses out of sows’ ears. I’ve made a lot of mistakes lately, mermaid. The worst was letting things with you end the way they did. I need a sensible friend, someone to let me know when I’m about to screw up again. I thought I’d tell you the position is still open.”
A well-rehearsed speech, and she’d hit her marks. Now a lopsided smile. “We should catch up. How about lunch?”
“All right. My break’s at twelve forty-five.”
“But that’s an hour from now. You can’t slip away before then?”
“Were you listening to yourself during that sensible friend speech a minute ago?”
At a quarter to one I presented myself at the Tremayne’s cafeteria. Ruby broke away from a conversation with Mr. Simkins from Haberdashery. “That fellow’s a bit overbearing. Wouldn’t want him measuring my inseam. I’ll blow you lunch, mermaid. Anything you like, on me.”
“A cup of tea’s fine.” Ruby kicked up a squawk, but I held firm. I’d brought in some leftover breakfast sausages wrapped in waxed paper and I couldn’t abide letting food go to waste.
Ruby ordered the ham-and-egg platter—“Still a growing girl”—and settled in at a table by the window, the afternoon sun striking her porcelain face like God’s own key light.
Design for Dying Page 2
