Final Curtain: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries)

by Ed Ifkovic

  “I’m so sorry,” I told her.

  “I floundered, lost interest in movies, and one afternoon, distraught, I wandered into Aimee Semple McPherson’s church. It was as though I’d been led there—driven like the Magi toward Bethlehem, following a star in the sky. I devoted the next few years to her crusade until, well, I began to distrust her…her authority. Her sincerity. She forgave sins too easily, especially her own. I went out on my own, traveling, preaching, and eventually met Tobias in Buffalo. Destiny.”

  “And Dakota?” I asked. “I gather he was on the road with you.”

  A long silence, uncomfortable. A ragged sound from deep in her throat. “Not at first. Well, he was a baby. A little boy. Later on I took him with me—taught him to preach. You have to understand my father, Edna. An old man, rigid, bitter. He thought kindness a dangerous trait. When Dakota was born, I was still an…an actress. Whatever that means. He insisted I bring Dakota back East, where he had Ilona care for him in this small town, quiet, decent, away from the nonsense of Hollywood. I had to agree. My sister had to agree, though she resisted. She refused at first, and still insists the heavenly charity crippled her life. I was still grieving over Philip’s sudden death. So his first days were here—in my sister’s care.”

  “And a lot of thanks I get for it, let me tell you.”

  We all jumped. I actually screamed, which I regretted—too much the showboat ingénue feeling menaced.

  In the doorway stood a shriveled woman dressed in a charcoal gray dress that sagged below her knees, a gigantic rhinestone brooch stuck onto her chest like a bug splattered on a car windshield.

  “Ilona, you sneak in like a cat.” Clorinda wasn’t happy.

  “I live here. I told you I’d come down for dessert. Maybe. Then I’m startled to hear how I raised that brat of yours, for no credit. None. A delinquent, that boy, sassy, angry all the time, messing up in school when he drew pictures of dead winter trees. He never fit in.”

  Clorinda’s voice broke. “Ilona, meet Edna Ferber and George Kaufman.”

  A sickly smile, humorless. “I’m charmed.”

  Ilona had been described as the younger sister of Clorinda, but looked much older, haggard even, wrinkled, a woman beaten down. She leaned on the doorjamb, insolent, observing us harshly.

  “Join us?” Tobias stood and pulled out a chair.

  Ilona cleared her throat. “Oh, I don’t think so. I’m a bit under the weather. The heat God sends us this time of year.” She chuckled. “I suppose—to prepare us for hell. He’s doing a good job. Clorinda, I heard your nonsense about father’s didactic authority. Does anyone recall anyone asking me if I wanted to deal with a squawking baby while you partied the night away in California? No, I don’t think so. I made him a God-fearing boy, and you sent letters telling him to explore the beauty of life, to seek adventure, to sing from the treetops—or some such crap. And off he goes. Mama’s boy. Then one day you’re back, religion now seeping out of your pores, and you take him to your bosom. Turn him against me. And I’m left alone, the shunted spinster in a mausoleum. A vicious father dead. The house I lived in all my life given to you, the mother of the family heir.”

  Tobias was glowering. “This is no time for such revelation, Ilona. We have guests. We all do what we have to do in life.”

  She grimaced. “Oh, please. Spare me! And now you look for ways to protect the church from the sheriff’s knock on the door. Dakota the murderer!”

  Clorinda screamed. “Enough.” She turned to me. “Ilona sees herself as the church mouse, the ignored, the…”

  “The woman begging for crumbs at your”—she pointed at Tobias—“abundant table. Good night.” She turned on her heels and left the room. A voice from the hallway. “A murderer!”

  “Well,” George began, folding his napkin and placing it on the table. “We must be going. It’s been…”

  “I’m so sorry,” Clorinda jumped in. “Ilona is so unhappy.” She squinted. “Yes, unhappy. She has refused to accept Jesus into her life and…”

  “Well,” echoed George, standing up.

  “Dakota is our future,” Tobias whispered.

  Clorinda pleaded with me. “Edna, we don’t know where to turn. I don’t like Dakota spending so much time at the theater. I know the evils of the stage. I also wanted to talk to you about that. I begged him not to take that unnecessary job there. The theater can be so corrupting.”

  “Well, thank you!” George smiled broadly.

  “No, not you two. But people like…Evan Street, a man born to plague and be murdered.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “Of course. Here. He visited Dakota. One unpleasant visit, unexpected. He ignored me. Too good-looking, trading his looks for evil. He came with the other…Gus…the Nazi. As frightening a man as I’ve ever met. That fisheye look of his. Why are those characters hired by your producer? Why? Tobias and I won’t step into that theater.”

  George was standing, stretching out his arms, preparing thanks.

  I wasn’t ready to leave. “Dak knows them from California, I gather. A brief moment, I’m told. Whatever happened there came East with them—and to Maplewood.”

  Clorinda looked puzzled. “How can that be? A few months in Hollywood and this is what happens? Dakota never talks of Hollywood, Edna.”

  I suddenly thought of something. “Another player at the theater, too. I think Dak knew the understudy Nadine Novack out there.”

  Clorinda’s voice got raspy. “Nadine Novack. An actress?”

  “Yes, but in Hollywood she acted under her real name. Nadine Chappelle.”

  Clorinda stood, gripped the edge of the table. She screamed at the top of her voice, her body rocking back and forth, and fled the room. I could hear her slamming a door, the sound of her footsteps running up the stairs, still screaming.

  “What?” I asked Tobias.

  He shook his head.

  George mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Well, thank you again…”

  Chapter Eight

  Constable Biggers stood outside the Full Moon Café, planted on the sidewalk, pad and pencil in hand. He was staring through the plate-glass window. Beads of sweat dotted his flushed face.

  “Good afternoon, Constable.” I marched by him, headed into the café.

  He said nothing and didn’t move a muscle.

  Inside, greeted by Mamie Trout who announced fresh blueberry pie with homemade whipped cream, I watched Gus Schnelling and Meaka Snow, both positioned by the front window, staring back out at the constable.

  “He’s still there.” Meaka Snow pointed out the window, looking directly into the impassive face of Constable Biggers, who stared back, unmoving.

  “He’s an ass.” Gus jerked his head toward the constable. Then a mocking laugh, ugly, his voice carrying through the empty cafe. “I suppose he wants me to confess to killing Evan. A lunchtime confession. Indigestion at this greasy spoon making me confess.” He stretched back, the prominent Adam’s apple in a surprisingly scrawny neck jutting out. For a short, stocky man, he had a long, skinny neck that made his large head seem balloon-like. Casually, he lit a Camel and blew the smoke toward the front window. Meaka laughed derisively.

  So Constable Biggers was obviously surveilling both Gus and Dak, Evan’s two casual friends who had minor-league run-ins with the murdered man.

  Meaka leaned forward, smug. “Ain’t it clear that Dak did it?”

  Gus said nothing, but glanced my way, his eyes hooded and wary. A slight grin appeared, a little sardonic, I thought. Nodding at Meaka, he stopped watching Biggers and focused on me. All morning long, in fact, as George rehearsed The Royal Family and kept carping about Irene Purcell’s difficulty with a scene in Act Two, I would turn to find Gus in the wings watching me. A furtive glance, then a hasty turning away as he buried his head in some electric board. At one point,
distracted by his shadow from a catwalk above us, I forgot my place, and George, already piqued by Irene’s off-kilter performance, snapped at me. “Edna, you wrote that line.”

  I snapped back. “I wrote most of the lines, dear George.”

  He harrumphed, and called for a break.

  Now, again in a staring contest with the errant electrician, I opened my mouth, “Gus, you seem to want to tell me something.”

  Meaka had been making faces out the window, but she swung around, annoyed. Her hard, dull eyes accused me.

  “Nothing.” Gus glanced at Meaka. “Seen you with Dak, that’s all. And the grapevine tells us”—he suggested Meaka as part of the us—“you’re pointing the finger at me.”

  Stunned, I sat up. “I never did so, young man. True, I’m certain of Dak’s innocence…”

  He spat out the words. “That’s not what I heard.”

  “From whom?”

  He glanced at Meaka, and I wondered whether she’d concocted such malarkey.

  Meaka spoke up. “You were seen with him.”

  “I’m seen with lots of folks.”

  Gus bit his lip. “Evan was my friend.” Said, the line hung in the air, false and strained. Even Meaka looked puzzled.

  “And yet you did battle.”

  His blond eyebrows rose and his dark gray eyes got round and glassy. “Friends disagree. Yeah, we had a little spat. Shoving matches ain’t much. Evan was a cad, Miss Ferber. I didn’t like the way he treated Meaka.”

  Meaka stiffened, spine erect, fury in her face. You saw a chubby young woman, a cotton-candy moon face, and a hairdo doubtless chopped with sewing scissors in her bathroom. In a drab white linen blouse and black skirt, she looked the deadened schoolmarm, much feared by her youngsters.

  I stood. “Might I join you both for a minute?”

  I didn’t wait for them to refuse, as both certainly looked prepared to do—Meaka putting a hand on the top of the free chair at their table and Gus turning his body away from me—and, cavalierly, I sat down.

  Well,” Meaka snorted. An unlovely girl, I thought, one used to dismissal and snide comment.

  “I’m curious about something.” A heartbeat. “Who do you think murdered Evan?”

  Both spoke at once, loudly. “Dak.” And Gus added, “I told you.”

  “Why?”

  Gus sucked in his cheeks. “It ain’t your business, Miss Ferber.”

  “Oh, but it is. I like Dak. He’s one of the few people I’ve met in Maplewood I do like. He’s not a murderer.”

  “That means you…you got to point the finger at someone else.”

  Meaka added, “Like right here at this table.”

  “No, I’ll leave that to the sheriff.”

  All of us now peered out the window at the stoic Constable Biggers, still there, pad at the ready, pencil stub in hand.

  “Hah,” Meaka scoffed. “That two-bit yokel. What passes for justice in this fleabag berg.”

  “You don’t like it here?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “That’s none of your business.”

  I tilted up my chin. I leaned in. “Why would Dak kill Evan?”

  “Evan knew things.”

  That stopped me cold. “What things?”

  “This conversation is over,” Gus answered.

  “But just tell me this.” I shifted focus purposely. “I read the smudged juvenile leaflet you handed me the other day.” Meaka sat back, grinning. “You two seem to have a foolhardy attraction toward Nazism. This love of Hitler. The master race and…”

  Gus interrupted me. “The savior of Europe.”

  “Not everyone believes that.”

  “You’ll see.” Meaka added, “The world needs a powerful charismatic leader who is uniting…”

  “Charlie Chaplin with a gun.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.” He sneered. “America is in the hands of the international Jewish bankers who…”

  “Poppycock,” I sputtered.

  Gus was taken aback by my outburst and seemed to soften a bit. “Is that a word?”

  “Yes, and a particularly good one with louts.”

  His laugh was icy. “A difference in point of view. That’s all.”

  I was furious. “Oh, I don’t think so. Some points of view are destructive. Frankly, I feel in my bones that we’re headed for a worldwide cataclysmic nightmare. Surely you can see that. Hitler’s tanks across France. Scandinavia. The new assault on Britain. Ever since the Depression—all the breadlines, apple sellers, and crazy all-night dance marathons—a world has been shaken free of its moorings. And young folks like you, Americans, I trust, have been duped into believing some German buffoon is the answer.”

  “Well…” Gus hedged.

  I spoke now with authority, my words spaced and cold. “I live in New York. Last year the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden filled the rafters with pro-German sentiment. I’ve been told you were there. Shame on you, Gus. Some fake blather about George Washington and America. In my own backyard. In the morning I stroll down Lexington Avenue, and sometimes, late afternoons, I used to go to Yorkville for pastry at a German confectionary. A German neighborhood, that, and now in the window are pictures of Hitler, German Bund placards, Jewish businesses boycotted, worse—swastikas emblazoned on doorways. In my own backyard.”

  “Well…” Gus said again, wanting the conversation over, sitting there, this blunt man with his Aryan arrogance, dumb as butter.

  “You’re Jewish?” Meaka’s voice hissed, lips rolling over the words.

  “On my mother’s side. On my father’s side. And my mother’s family came from Germany where, these days, they fear walking in the streets. I’ve managed to get four children and three adults out of Berlin, my mother’s cousins. Just ahead of the madness.” I stopped, out of breath.

  “Leeches.” Meaka thundered the word.

  Looking at her, I realized she’d assumed the role of crusader. Gus was a simpleton, a knee-jerk follower, a lumbering ox. He’d brought Meaka into the fold, and, like many religious converts, she’d embraced the cause in a kind of maddened frenzy. Meaka was a roly-poly zealot filled with ill-defined bile. Doubtless an unloved child, mocked—and now, lamentably, a seeker of revenge. A dangerous woman, and ready now to pounce. Gus squirmed, uncomfortable with my presence and eager to leave. Paradoxically, Meaka thrived on it, relishing my uneasiness.

  Gus pushed away his plate and was reaching into his pocket for cash. But Meaka, her face purplish, was not through. “You’re gonna pin Evan’s murder on us.” Gus put out his hand to stop her. “Gus wouldn’t waste his time on that…that playboy, that pretty lump of emptiness. A superficial man with get-rich quick schemes that went nowhere.”

  “Stop.” Gus shot her a look.

  “No, I won’t. Dak is a weak sissy-boy, the kind who stabs you in the back in a fit of anger. The kind who’s scared of guns but finds himself pulling a trigger. ‘Oh oh oh. Now look what I did.’ The little time I spent with him—all of us sucking beers at a tavern—he whined about his…his obligations. The demands of his mother. The Assembly of God. Tomorrow’s preacher. The next Billy Sunday. God, it was tiring. And sickening. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t. I don’t want to do it. I want to paint.’ It made me want to throw up.”

  Gus stood, annoyed. “Meaka, enough. Miss Ferber’s not gonna believe you. Nothing can change her mind about Dak.”

  “Well, convince me.”

  Meaka ignored me. “Another time he brung along the chosen bride—Annika Something-or-Other—she stayed a few minutes and grabbed at him. ‘These are not good people,’ she actually said about us. And about Evan. Like we weren’t even there in the room. ‘Can’t you see they’re godless? You can’t be around such…offal.’ She actually used that goddamn word. Offal. Me! She got him the hell out of there fast enough. Never again.” />
  “What did Evan say?”

  “He laughed at the whole thing. Told her she was only pretty when she got angry.”

  “What did she do?”

  Meaka threw back her head. “She slapped his face.” She grinned. “The only moment I ever respected her.”

  Gus was nervous, jingling the coins in his pants pocket. “Dak kept apologizing for her.”

  “Because he’s weak. There is no room for the weak in the world of the future.”

  “Does that include me? A Jewish woman?”

  She waited a bit. A sickly smile. “Of course.” Meaka started to walk away, pushing her fist into Gus’ lower back. “I’m just surprised Annika doesn’t kill Nadine.”

  That stopped me. “What?”

  “The way Dak is mooning around her, following her around town.”

  “What does Annika know about that?”

  “She ain’t stupid, lady. Dak is pretty transparent.”

  “All right, yes, Dak has a crush on Nadine, it seems. Unfortunate, seeing that he’s engaged to Annika. But I don’t understand that relationship. Still and all, why would Annika kill her?”

  Gus grunted. “He doesn’t know what to do about Annika.”

  Meaka glanced at Gus. “I guess Miss Ferber doesn’t know about Dak and Nadine.”

  Suddenly I flashed to Clorinda screaming at the mention of Nadine’s name at dinner. “Tell me.”

  Gus looked triumphant, twisting that round head on that skinny neck, the Adam’s apple bobbing. “God, the secrets some people got around here. Miss Ferber, Dakota and Nadine were married in California. A brief marriage annulled by the powers of Mommy with Daddy’s big money and influence. Nadine has a soft spot for Dak still—why else is she here in Maplewood? But ask her about her first marriage, about the suicide of that husband. Christ, ask her about Evan.”