Cold Wind to Valhalla (Abby Fouchet Mysteries Book 3)

by Flo Fitzpatrick

  “Are they really naked?” Shay asked as she shoved me back into my seat and stared out the window.

  “Of course not! Are you nuts.”

  Johnny sighed. “But they will be. Which is your explanation for why they’re out there. We’re about four blocks from the Cameo Theatre and I imagine they have a matinee this afternoon.”

  “Oh.” I slumped against the seat, deflated. “I know, I know. Grasping at straws. I’m not sure what it is about those two but I do not like them. For one thing they’re joined at the hip, which is creepy.”

  “Especially since you’ve seen those hips,” Shay chortled. “Billie-Clare really does need a major liposuction. I checked out the photos in the Cameo Theatre the day Johnny dragged us down there and that woman’s body is not a joy to behold.” She suddenly stared at me then snickered, “Are you pregnant or something? You ate two croissants on the subway on our way here and that was after breakfast this morning? What’s up with you?”

  “I am not pregnant. I am hungry. I did not eat dinner last night because we never broke for dinner. We were frantically filming illicit sex scenes and I was tired anyway from the hang-up phone calls and the driver didn’t make any stops between the set and the various residences of the various cast members he drove home so we could spend a peaceful weekend before bouncing down cliffs, having more illicit sex and being sequestered next week. So leave me in peace and shut up about my eating habits.”

  She shrugged and stated with a very superior tone, “I flew in from California yesterday evening and I’m not pulling the pig act. You’re going to end up with Billie-Clare’s hips if you’re not careful.”

  I sweetly said, “I saw those six cartons from Wiki Woks you left in the fridge from last night. There was barely a dab left in those cartons. Not a single fortune cookie either —which is really rude.”

  Johnny jumped into the conversation with more than a touch of exasperation, “Will you two quit? I have information here that might lead to giving Colette’s last words some meaning and might keep Abby from being followed, stalked, harassed— or worse.”

  I brightened. “You do? This isn’t merely idle gossip and musing and atmosphere soaking? Well, shut my mouth. And Shay’s. Hit it, Johnny.”

  “The basics, which unfortunately are very little: Gabrielle Garrity was born in 1909. Apparently she moved from Louisiana to New York at the ripe old age of three. She created the character of Cinnamon when she was fifteen and toured all over the country. She was mildly famous as the first woman clown or comedienne in America for about twelve years. She died in her apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, on October 29, 1929. Her funeral at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, however was fairly well-attended by her vaudevillian friends.”

  Shay and I both were trying not to cry. “God. That’s so tragic. She was what? Thirty? My gosh. What happened? And why was she broke and living in a ratty rooming house?” Shay asked.

  “I don’t know. As far as I could find out, she never married. Many of her friends were still touring. Maybe it was just sheer pride. Who wants to feel like they’re at the mercy of charity from anyone and that your friends and former colleagues see you as an object of their pity?” Johnny responded.

  Nods all around.

  Johnny took a breath. “Those are the stark facts. I also found a list of performances she did in theatres in Manhattan. Plus a list of the five movies she was in. All backed up and referenced. But, here’s where the story starts, at least as far as Colette and subsequently Abby and all of us are concerned.”

  “What? Jeez, quit drawing it out, will you?” I snapped. "I love you but you're making me crazy!"

  “I started wondering why Colette would be interested in Cinnamon Garrity. Was she planning on doing a one-woman show or something? Was she writing a script for a whole play? Possibly, but shows take money to produce and why would anyone kill her for that anyway? So, I started looking into Colette’s background.”

  “And?”

  “And, I need to first read a little clipping from one of the New York papers.”

  “It’s about to get convoluted, isn’t it?” I groaned.

  “A tad. Not horribly.” Johnny pulled out a small notebook. “This was written two days after Cinnamon died. Ready? ‘On the evening of October 28, 1929, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Asher returned to their residence at 454 W. 46th Street in the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan after viewing the new moving picture ‘Broadway Melody”. They stopped at the door of Miss Gabrielle Garrity, better known as Cinnamon the Clown from her years on the stages of vaudeville, who had declined to accompany them, complaining of a headache. After receiving no response from their repeated knockings, Mr. Asher tried the doorknob handle and discovered the room was unlocked. Upon entering, they found Miss Garrity lying dead, apparently having succumbed to her illness.’”

  “Lousy prose— but the facts are there,” Shay stated, holding back a sniff.

  I wasn’t bothering to hold my own sniffs back. Despite the sparse language and questionable grammar I’d envisioned the scene that had taken place in 1929 and that vision upset me so much I let quiet tears flow.

  Silence.

  I finally broke it. “Four-fifty-four West Forty-sixth Street? Call me crazy but isn’t that Colette’s building?”

  Johnny nodded. “Yes, it is. So, we go to the next question once Abby tells me it’s okay to continue. Do you need to take a few moments?”

  “No. I’m all right. I won’t burst into great hacking sobs. I promise,” I stated. “Go on.”

  “Okay. So, what have all great detectives asked through the ages? Two major questions. Why do people kill and why do people want to know last words? Murder is usually for greed, envy, fear or passion. Sociopaths and total nut job serial killers notwithstanding, those four things stand out for motives. Now, the police have been going on the assumption in Colette’s case that murder was not the objective and that the person who shot that gun meant to scare Colette into talking. So, Colette must have had information about Cinnamon that would benefit someone. Maybe information she found somewhere in that building?”

  Three nodding heads. Ivan spoke first. “Makes sense. The information from Colette part I mean. Murder never makes sense even when it’s a mistake.”

  I added, “But what’s the info? Cinnamon Garrity died with no money and no heirs to inherit. So much for greed, right?”

  Johnny smiled. “Bear with me. Shay, you’re going to love this. Abby heard Colette’s words correctly but couldn’t figure out how they fit in so she split them up. It wasn’t move. And it wasn’t he. I think she had it right the first time she told Detective Clark. Colette was trying to say movie. I believe the motive revolves around the movies.”

  Chapter 16

  “So, you think Colette Currie was going to make a movie about Cinnamon?” Shay asked. “Which would be fabulous. I may want to do that myself. I'll see if I can track down Bambi and see if Headlights would like to produce it. She's still in San Francisco working on some idea about Caruso and a performance of Carmen that happened during the big earthquake. Anyway, a movie about Cinnamon has got the prerequisites—tragedy of a woman dying penniless and alone—the first female clown feminist bit—the why she never married in an age when women were looked upon as less than nothing if they weren’t married . . . uh . . .”

  “Shay, it would make a great movie, but that still doesn’t answer why Colette got shot and all the frantic interest in what she said.”

  Johnny put his hand up. “Stop! You two are like puppies spotting their first bone. There’s more. Let me get to that before you go sprinting down the finish line.”

  “You’re mixing metaphors,” I told him.

  “I don’t care. Sue me. Anything to let me finish.”

  “Go on. We’ll be good,” I told him. He knew that wasn’t true and he knew that I knew it wasn’t true when I said it but he took advantage of the statement to dive into the next facts and theories that would hopefully lead to some answers.
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  “Movies.”

  “You said that,” Shay stated.

  Johnny narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, I’ve almost decided I’m not going to say it again since it obviously is a signal for you and Abigail to chatter. Let me back up a bit anyway because my theory doesn’t make sense unless you hear the other juicy little tidbits I came up with.”

  We stayed silent.

  “First, do any of y'all you see a problem with the story of Cinnamon’s death anywhere?”

  “Aside from the piss-poor writing style of the reporter, oh yeah. How does a thirty-year old woman die from a flippin’ headache? Unless it was a concussion or a brain tumor or aneurism or stroke in which case one would suppose that would have been mentioned in the article. But it’s not. The Ashers asked her to go to see a movie and they wouldn’t have done that if she’d suffered a concussion anytime earlier or been complaining for months of migraines or something. And thirty seems really young for a stroke."

  Johnny beamed at me. “I’m so glad Endless Time is sharpening your fine investigative skills along with paying off your student loans.”

  “I didn’t have student loans. I had massive scholarships and various jobs all through college—which primarily consisted of teaching dance to cute little kids in tiaras. But thanks for the compliment—I think. Anyway . . . headache. You drew the same conclusion I’m drawing now, right?”

  Shay answered for him, intoning deeply and dramatically, “Murder.”

  Ivan plopped his mug down onto the table. “Where are you guys coming up with that? Jumping from a headache to murder seems like a huge leap to me. If this Cinnamon woman had been murdered wouldn’t there have been something in the papers about that?”

  Shay appeared stricken. “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right. Well, gee, I was getting all excited about delving into the mystery of Cinnamon Garrity’s demise. Which sounds like a movie. The Mystery of Cinnamon Garrity’s Demise. I like it. Not the demise. The title.”

  Johnny and I exchanged glances but I spoke for him, reading his mind. “Shay. Ivan. Consider the day that Cinnamon died. October 28, 1929.”

  They both looked confused. For two very smart people, they weren’t catching on at all. I suggested more coffee.

  Johnny took over. “Think, guys. What happened the next day? October 29, 1929.”

  The invisible light bulbs over two heads finally switched on. “Black Tuesday. As opposed to Black Friday the term now used for shopping frenzies after Thanksgiving, which never made sense to me anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah. The big stock market crash,” Shay muttered.

  I nodded. “Which would have been the focus of every paper in America, but especially New York papers. Even if there’d been a suspicion about Cinnamon’s death, even if the cops had conducted an investigation, there probably wouldn’t have been a word about it in those papers unless a culprit had been identified and arrested. Nobody would have cared. So, Johnny? Did you find anything that even hinted her death wasn’t natural?”

  “Not at first."

  I groaned. “There’s a ton more you’re theorizing, right?”

  He nodded. “There was never a mention of murder in any of the papers. But, being as skilled online as I am in a library, I did a very intense Internet search using the terms Cinnamon, Daniel Asher, murder, Nineteen-twenty-nine and suspicion.”

  “And?” I inquired.

  “And hit the proverbial jackpot. I found a copy of The Billboard published in 1935 that included an article about the comics and clowns of the silent movies. It was taken from a book, which, unfortunately I haven’t been able to find. At any rate, the author happened to be—wait for it—one Daniel Asher, who might not have been the best writer of the Twentieth Century, but had a deep love of his subject, especially since it appears he lived next door to one of those clowns.”

  “As in Cinnamon who obviously was a friend if he and his wife were inviting her to movies. Wow. What else?"

  "Daniel Asher had devoted a large portion of the article to relating the sad fate of several comics or clowns who’d been big in vaudeville or silent movies and then just kind of drifted out of the public awareness or favor. The first was Mr. Frank Oakley, known as Silvers, who committed suicide by gas asphyxiation in Manhattan. One report has the date as 1912; one as 1916. Whatever. A man who had been his partner onstage more than once, Marcelino Orbes, more commonly known as Marceline, also committed suicide in November 1927 in a hotel in Manhattan.”

  I shivered. “This is awful. Please tell me that’s all of them?”

  “One other Manhattan suicide. In 1940, a very famous F.B.I. collaborator who’d worked as a circus clown and a writer, a publicist and a few other things, committed suicide, also in Manhattan at a hotel. There was some suspicion of murder there as well but there was also some reason for suicide.”

  Shay pipe up, “Any clowns who were definitely murdered?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Not that I found in America. And I didn’t want to go too far on a tangent since I thought it was more important to read about Cinnamon.”

  I nodded. “Okay. So we have three suicides in Manhattan by vaudevillian clowns. What did Asher say about Cinnamon? Apparently he didn’t think it was a suicide or he would have added her to the other three Manhattan deaths.”

  “He actually had quite a bit to say. He elaborated far more on her biography than the others, which I won’t get into here and now. He talked about what a wonderful lady she was and how sad it was that she died at thirty and all the good works she’d done, etcetera, etcetera. All neat to know but not relevant to the problem at hand.”

  I took a sip of my coffee, swallowed, then asked, “And what is relevant? Or is the better question—did you find anything relevant?”

  “I did. Asher noted two things that I considered extremely relevant. The first was that Cinnamon Garrity produced and starred in an independent movie that was made in Nineteen-twenty-eight around March or April. Never released. Which means there might be a Cinnamon Garrity movie up for grabs in the world.” He paused and held up his hand. “And before the barrage of questions begins, allow me to tell you the other very relevant bit of information. Currie noted that among Ms. Garrity’s talents was a gift for science. Inventions. Sounds like she invented what should have been the world’s first blow-dryer when she figured out how to reverse a vacuum cleaner hose to blow hot air.”

  “Wow! That was—what—fifty years before portable hairdryers? That’s amazing,” Ivan exclaimed.

  Shay poked his rib. “Why do you care? There’s not enough fringe on top to warrant a tiny breeze, much less two thousand watts or whatever. You could dry the moustache though."

  I tossed a napkin at Shay. “Shush, children. Johnny, continue.”

  He did. “In nineteen-sixteen she invented a solvent for celluloid that was very similar to a polyester stock that could keep film from deteriorating, unlike the cellulose and tri-acid stocks. According to Asher’s article, she’d gotten a patent for it, even named it ‘Garrity’s Silver’ but couldn’t persuade the moneymen who were making movies back then that it was a viable and money-making invention, so no one bought it. Then the patent was stolen and disappeared—but was used—often. I’d have to check with a patent attorney but I’m thinking it could be worth millions today in back royalties. And since Cinnamon Garrity did not have an immediate family, she willed her possessions, which included the patent rights, to—you guessed it—Daniel Asher, her next door neighbor who may well have done something bizarre like hide them in that building. For Colette Currie to find eighty-odd years later.”

  “Oh no! Doubled-darn-dookey! I cannot believe this! Get me out of this now!” I screamed, but with soft volume.

  “What?” Three people stared at me in horror and fear that perhaps one of our suspects had just dropped down from the ceiling.

  I moaned. “It’s Endless Time two-point-O! Endless Time on crack! Endless Time on acid! Whatever. That’s our stinkin’ plot! Stolen patents and murders commi
tted for them. Throw in affairs between vampy actresses and sexy actors playing sheiks and filming crazy scenes that will eventually involve murder! Jeez! I do not believe this. First it was comas a year ago and now its murdered comediennes with patents. Why is my life turning into one long daytime drama?”

  Chapter 17

  I let my gaze wander for about fifteen seconds before saying, “Wow. Not that I’m planning on this happening in the next few years or even in the next sixty or more since the Fouchet crew seems to live into their nineties, but when I die I would love to be buried here. The history of this place and the absolute beauty. I’m not sure which is more impressive and I don’t care because I’m enthralled with both. Whoever designed Kensico Cemetery did one brilliant job.”

  Johnny glanced at me and smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind. Your final resting place—and mine, since I'm planning on resting with you." He stopped. “I agree with you. This is magnificent..”

  “It doesn’t even have that creepy spooky quality a normal cemetery has—even in the rain, which reminds me—this couldn’t wait until a sunny day?”

  “Like when? A week from now? Remember, sequestration in Jersey starts again late tonight. We could wait until our favorite medium, Madam Euphoria, aka Jane Doe, returns from New Orleans, but Yolanda told me Jane had some big psychic convention or something she was attending next week. "

  I chuckled. "Doubtless along with our not-so-favorite medium Auraliah Lee. Watch. The two of them will get together and come up with ways to make me crazy whenever you or I are in danger. Anyway, answering my own stupid question, this trip couldn’t wait. If there’s anything hidden I feel like we needed to find it now before the various suspects find me and try whatever means necessary to have me spill Colette’s dying declaration.”

  Johnny held an oversized umbrella above the two of us as we headed toward what the Kensico Cemetery guide map reported was the final resting place of Gabrielle Cinnamon Garrity. We were both so intent on our mission we barely noticed we were in the presence of amazing statues and markers touting celebrities.