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

by Ed Ifkovic

  But perhaps I was being foolish.

  Yet my instincts said: no, keep going.

  Three days before opening night, and I scarcely thought about the play now. The Royal Family, that sardonic send-up of an Upper East Side theatrical family, seemed far removed from the nitty-gritty verisimilitude of Maplewood’s tree-shrouded, though cruel, sidewalks. Like a well-oiled machine, it moved along—and I automatically moved with it, robotic, unthinking.

  “You’re scaring people,” George concluded.

  “That’s the way I like it.”

  “Most times it’s just me, but I don’t threaten to kill you. Or, at least, not to your face.”

  At midmorning, in the middle of our first full dress rehearsal, with me slathered up in Fanny Cavendish’s dowager costume and makeup, Frank signaled to George, who stepped away from the stage. A moment later, a baffled look on his face, he halted the rehearsal.

  “A half-hour break,” he told us, annoyed. “It seems we have a royal visitation. The real royal family of Maplewood.”

  The cast scattered, rushing for cigarettes and coffee and gossip, but he motioned to me. “Edna, a moment.”

  A bittersweet smile on his lips, the mischief-maker in a moment of anticipation.

  “George, what?”

  “The royal family, visiting.”

  He led me to the front of the house, where Alexander, Tobias’ driver, stood, chauffeur’s cap in hand, a slight twitch of his lips as he called my name.

  “Miss Ferber, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler to see you.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside.”

  I glared at George. He shrugged.

  Outside, indeed! The long, black Lincoln town car had pulled up against the curb, and in the backseat, holding hands and dressed for some formal function, were Clorinda and Tobias.

  George sighed. “Do what you have to do, Edna. We’ll rehearse scenes you’re not in.” He nudged me. “Go.”

  Alexander whispered to me, awe in his voice. “Mr. Tyler never comes into the Village. Never!”

  And yet he had, ceremoniously.

  I knew that the reclusive man hid away in his mansion, venturing out only to services at the Assembly of God, and then back home promptly. The man gingerly stepped through his days, a man who imagined he floated on some ethereal cloud and not, lamentably, on wheels manufactured in Detroit. Dak had told me he was frightened of jostling people, of the gaping bystander, but not of the congregants who respected his silence as he sat in a rear pew. “Worshippers of Clorinda,” Dak added, “move as though they are alone with God.”

  So this visit was auspicious—and troublesome.

  Alexander opened the rear door, and Tobias leaned across Clorinda, who sat stone-faced, lips tight in a razor line. Despite the heat of the day, Tobias was dressed in his severe Cotton Mather broadloom suit, a somber purple ascot secured around his neck, a matching handkerchief in his breast pocket. The funeral director comes a-calling. His face was expressionless.

  “Miss Ferber, I request a brief meeting.”

  “We’re in the middle of a rehearsal.” I pointed to my Fanny Cavendish garb. “I’m in makeup.”

  “No matter. I came myself because I sensed you would refuse dear Clorinda.” He spoke in a squeaky voice that reminded me of rain beating down on a tin roof.

  Clorinda turned her head away from me.

  “Tobias…”

  “It is urgent. The matter with our son Dakota has come to a head.”

  “Has something happened?” I asked quickly, panicked.

  Clorinda spoke loudly, her words clipped, hostile. “Other than the fact that he argues with me constantly now and disappears for hours at a time.”

  Tobias, surprise in his voice. “He talked back to me, Miss Ferber.”

  Flat out, looking into his upturned face. “And I imagine no one dares do that?”

  A thin, Uriah Heep smile, sickening. “No reason to. I’m a gentle man of God. God chooses others to execute his horrible wrath. Not I. Though I believe in the awesome might…” His voice trailed off when Clorinda placed a hand on his sleeve.

  “Still and all.” I looked back to the theater. George was standing in the doorway, watching, his hand over his eyes to shield the bright sunlight. Peculiarly, Frank was behind him, only partly visible behind a half-closed door. When I glanced back again, he was gone. Standing as sentry beside the open car door, Alexander was staring up at the marquee, which announced, in huge letters: EDNA FERBER in THE ROYAL FAMILY, Week of August 13.

  Then he looked back at me, amusement in his eyes. It made no sense to me.

  “Please,” Tobias went on, “we know your heart is in the right place with regard to our boy.”

  Clorinda looked at me, her eyes dancing. “Tobias never visits the Village, Edna.”

  “I have my God and my Clorinda.”

  “I still don’t understand…”

  “A half-hour of your time. At my home. We’ll have you back here soon enough.”

  I nodded: yes. Something was afoot here, though I sensed it had nothing to do with Evan’s murder. Clorinda obviously read my assent because she slid closer to Tobias, and I climbed in. Alexander closed the door.

  As the car pulled away from the curb, I could see George stepping out onto the sidewalk, looking after me. I raised my hand in the car, a wave to him, but I had no idea exactly what I was trying to communicate. Probably only my careless surrender to the enemy.

  Silence as we moved along, my attempts at small talk met with cleared throats and a muttered observation about the day’s horrible heat.

  As we neared the circular driveway fronting the mansion, I spoke up, “I received the strangest note this morning.”

  A flicker of interest from Clorinda, but Tobias simply sat facing forward.

  Neither said anything.

  “It reminded me of that note Dak received. The death threat.” I waited. “A warning.”

  Clorinda involuntarily grabbed at her throat, panicky, but still said nothing.

  I quoted it from memory, stressing the “beware” and “stop” and other storybook warnings to be careful, adding my own melodramatic spin on the words.

  Finally, as the car came to a stop, Clorinda turned to me. “Perhaps, then, you should heed the warning.”

  “You think so?”

  “I mean, it sounds like nonsense some crew member with a macabre sense of humor. Theater folks like their…their dark games. But sometimes the most important messages appear in the most unlikely way or place.” Yet her voice was flat, almost bored.

  Tobias was making a gurgling sound from the back of his throat, which I interpreted as a reprimand to Clorinda. Her thin, nervous smile at him seemed an apology.

  Inside we were met by Hilda, who seemed stunned by my lavish costume and heavy stage makeup. Her eyes blinked wildly. I felt like a circus clown. She led us to Tobias’ office, that precious inner sanctum he’d earlier shared with George and me. A tea service was already in place, with chairs placed decorously around the small mahogany table. A plate of cookies. A place set for me. They’d been confident I’d journey back with them, an observation that annoyed me. I dislike it when others predict my behavior—and are right.

  “Tell me,” I began after we settled in and Hilda poured tea. “Does this have to do with clearing Dak’s name in Evan’s—maybe even Gus’—murder?”

  “Gus?” Clorinda asked, as though she’d never considered him part of the Maplewood mystery.

  “He was murdered.”

  She sipped tea. “A filthy Nazi, that one.” Tobias narrowed his eyes at her, and she sat back. Suddenly, almost magically, the atmosphere in the room got chilly, the air heavy. It had to do, I realized, with the way Tobias and Clorinda looked at each other, and then, as one, back at me. I shivered in that hot room where all the windows we
re shut.

  When Tobias addressed me, all the gentleness and tentativeness of his usual manner had disappeared. Rather, his words were cold steel now, laced with a fury I’d not anticipated—or, in fact, thought he was capable of revealing.

  “Quite simply, we had nothing to do with that ill-considered note you received this morning, Miss Ferber, but our purpose this morning is to demand one thing from you—stay away from Dakota.”

  “But I thought you both wanted my help…if I remember from the dinner in this very house.”

  Clorinda’s hand went up, palm out. “Tobias thinks the issue of the murder—that is, Dakota’s being arrested—is simply preposterous. Otherwise, it would have been done.”

  Tobias added, “That fool Biggers is a decided ass. He has harassed Dakota, but clearly there is no evidence. I consider the matter over, so far as the Assembly of God is concerned.”

  “Still,” I insisted, “the investigation is continuing. What makes you so—confident? I’m not privy to what evidence is being gathered, and I know the FBI secured Gus’ room. I’ve seen the resident state trooper talking with Constable Biggers.”

  Again, the hand in my face. “Nonsense, all of it.” Clorinda’s voice dripped with venom, and I realized how thoroughly she disliked me now.

  “If this has nothing to do with the murder, then what? Why was I kidnapped this morning?” I waved my hand around the palatial room. Here, a short time ago, Tobias had eagerly showed off this room, his leather-bound books, the Persian carpet, his extensive research notes—indeed, that framed poster of Clorinda’s appearance in that forgotten silent movie. Yet now, sitting there, I felt unwelcome—in fact, a hated pariah. A woman invited solely to be talked down to, to be chastised.

  “Kidnapped?” Clorinda chuckled without humor. “You do go on, Edna.”

  “It’s very simple, Miss Ferber,” Tobias stated. He intertwined his fingers and rested his chin on them, staring over the small fingers with eyes so icy I thought of ogres and menacing trolls from long-ago fairy tales. “You have launched a campaign to draw Dakota away from the church—from his future among us. That notion suddenly dawned on me. The true mission of the infidel sort. You are committed to seducing him back to the stage.”

  Clorinda’s tone was bitter. “You betrayed our trust, Edna. You don’t think we haven’t heard of your coaxing Dakota to chart a life away from this.” She reached for her teacup, and then thought better of it. “Annika reports—indeed, Dakota himself, loose-tongued now, and frivolous—your…your sabotage.”

  My mind reeled, though I lingered on his facile definition of me—the infidel sort. George, I knew, would relish that remark, and bandy it about. “Dak is a grown man, unsuccessfully defined by you as something he is not. His own freedom should be something you…you celebrate.”

  Tobias’ eyebrows rose and the mouth twitched. “Celebrate? He has a calling before God.”

  I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the glass of Clorinda’s poster—shadowy, yes, but there I was: Fanny Cavendish, matriarch of the theater, imperious, haughty, smug—but also baffled by a changing world. A throwback to a genteel time when life seemed predictable, sure. So, touching my face with the thick stage makeup, I assumed the part, even using my stage voice. “Perhaps you and Clorinda—and maybe Annika—have such callings, but Dak sees the world differently. You’ve confused him tremendously, turned him around, set him adrift, so much so that he’s been a…a robot at the altar you’ve set up.”

  Tobias actually gasped, rising from his chair. A small man, wiry and pinched, he seemed a frantic monkey now, a chattering, pesky animal.

  “God comes first, always comes first, Miss Ferber.”

  “Would you have him arrested for the murders?”

  Clorinda glanced at her husband, sharing a smug smile. “We’ve spoken to folks at the state capital. The lieutenant governor, in fact, whose wife is…well, never mind. Tobias is not without influence. Constable Biggers will be spoken to. The matter is finished.”

  Tobias was furious. “Clorinda, you talk too much. Like Dakota, you stumble about among strangers, disclosing this, revealing that.”

  Clorinda panicked. “Forgive me, Tobias dear.” A quicksilver smile, desperate, as she leaned in to touch the gyrating man. “Please sit, dear.” As she answered him, her brilliant diamond earrings caught the overhead light, and shone beautifully.

  “Enough!” Tobias thundered. “Satan has cohorts at his side. Our enemies will be vanquished. A loving God is a God who will gladly and justly smite the heathen.”

  Fanny Cavendish gave back her own thunder. “And I’m that heathen?”

  The infidel sort.

  At that moment, I thought of my nemesis, Ethel Barrymore, that redoubtable actress, furious with Tallulah Bankhead’s imitation of her at a party I was at—and Ethel’s resounding slap across Tallulah’s face. Tobias, gesturing wildly, looked ready to slap me, his hand trembling near my face.

  “Enough! You will be gone in a week or so, as I understand it. Dak will not be returning to the theater so that…that Jezebel Nadine will not have him to tempt. Gone, all of you. I offered Nadine a huge settlement to leave town. The stupid girl refused. Gone, all of you. I’ve made myself clear.”

  With that, he turned and left the room, followed immediately by Clorinda. I was left sitting there, feeling a little foolish. Idly, I stared at the walls of books, at the cheap, framed poster of Clorinda. Idly, I debated my next move. But within seconds Alexander tiptoed into the room, nodding deferentially at me. “The car is ready to return you to the theater.”

  As I followed him out of the mansion, I looked for Tobias or Clorinda. No one was around. From the backseat of the town car, I glanced back at the house as Alexander turned out of the driveway. In a second-story window, a curtain shifted. For a moment I glimpsed a face, but I couldn’t tell whether it was Tobias or Clorinda. Then I thought: no, perhaps it was Ilona.

  ***

  Late that afternoon, sitting by my window reflecting on that encounter with Tobias and Clorinda, I looked down into the street as Nadine strolled by. I thought of Tobias’ offer of money, refused by her. She was with two stage crew members, and they were laughing at something. I watched her closely: so pretty, so fresh-looking, lighthearted, and yet I sensed she was part of something awful here, though perhaps not of her own doing. A young woman whose little-girl demeanor disguised some inner resolve. After all, she stood up to Tobias and his wealth. And, curiously, she’d journeyed to Maplewood with a purpose in mind. I assumed it was Dak. Or was it something else?

  The three young women were enjoying themselves.

  A car slid to a stop ahead of them, stopped sideways on the street, blocking them. Horrified, I watched Annika jump out of the driver’s seat, the car left running and the door wide open. She rushed toward the startled young women and shouted something at Nadine. Her words drifted up through my open window. “You think I don’t know what happened? What you are doing?”

  Nadine and the others didn’t move.

  In a blind rage, Annika’s hand flew out, slapping Nadine in the face. So raw a moment, so unexpected, that one of the other women screamed. The other, clutching a bottle of Coke, let it slip from her hand onto the pavement. Nadine stood there, silent now, her body bent at the waist, her hand rubbing her cheek.

  Annika stepped back, head bobbing, and she began sputtering, “Oh, my God. I didn’t mean that. Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I’m…sorry…I…” She looked around, wildly flicking her head, and she rushed back to her car, jumping in and slamming the door. She sped up the street, driving on the wrong side of the line. For some reason she was leaning on her horn.

  ***

  Ilona House joined me as I sat in the Full Moon Café. She didn’t wait to be invited to sit, but pulled up a chair, placed her elbows on the table. “So Tobias and Clorinda have shunned you.” Her own words delighted her beca
use she laughed loudly, so hard she started to choke. “Shunned from God’s glorious kingdom.”

  “It wasn’t funny.”

  “Oh, but it is. From my point of view, Edna dear.”

  I sipped iced tea with mint. “Frankly, they did stun me.” I managed a smile. “The infidel sort. Here I defined Tobias as a gentle, gnome-like little man, a little elf with deep pockets and a deeper love of God. A little maddened, yes. And Clorinda, fawning over me and giving that fiery Calvinist sermon that somehow still guaranteed salvation.”

  Ilona scoffed. “None of it’s true—or partly true. I don’t know. But Clorinda has taken on Tobias’ weird coloration—she’s appropriated that fire-and-brimstone belief, old New England, Puritan, predestination, stockades on the town green, the dunking of witches. Clorinda used to be the angel of forgiveness, all soft and fluffy. Under Tobias’ tutelage she became the fiery sword of damnation.”

  “Harsh words, no?”

  Her eyes pierced mine, riveted. “Didn’t you see it firsthand today when they commanded your presence at their lair?”

  “You heard?”

  “I’m an eavesdropper, dear.”

  “Yes, I saw a different Tobias and Clorinda. But I don’t understand—they’ve abandoned fear of Dak’s being arrested. They’re more afraid of Dak fleeing back into Nadine’s obviously waiting arms.”

  “The problem with Dakota is that he’s always been—malleable. A boy who’s easy to like, but just as easy to hate.”

  I broke in. “You hate him.”

  “Speaking of using harsh words, well, I used to love him. That little boy I had thrust upon me by a father very similar to Tobias. An authoritative, vindictive man. I showered Dakota with love, I fairly smothered him, but he was foolishly indulged by a long-distance mother. And when Clorinda returned to take him back, she poisoned him against me. ‘Aunt Ilona doesn’t love you like I do, my sweetie.’ I admit I turned nasty”—a smug smile—“because I’m not a nice person. That stays with a child. I didn’t know how to be a mother. And, I suppose, I resented it thrust on me. But neither did Clorinda.” She scoffed. “She still doesn’t know how to be a mother.”