Million Dollar Baby

by Amy Patricia Meade

  Marjorie managed a halfhearted greeting; her thoughts were still focused on Doris. The expression that had registered on the maid’s face was fear of something greater than the sharpness of her mistress’s tongue.

  “Well,” announced Mrs. Van Allen, “now that we all know each other, why don’t we make ourselves comfortable?”

  Marjorie saw an opportunity to excuse herself from the room. “Actually, Gloria, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll visit your powder room and wash the sherry out of my dress.”

  “By all means,” the heiress replied. “You wouldn’t want that lovely outfit to be stained, would you?” In Gloria’s language, the word “lovely” had a connotation similar to that of the word “charming.” “The powder room is down the hall, fourth door on your left.”

  “Thank you.” She finished the contents of her glass and left the drawing room, quietly shutting the door behind her. Doris was in the

  hallway, standing over a metal console table, polishing it morosely.

  Marjorie placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Doris.”

  The maid jumped and spun around in surprise. “Oh,” she declared breathlessly. “It’s you, miss. You startled me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Doris’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, no, miss! If anyone should be sorry, it’s me! I hope I didn’t ruin your dress. It’s so pretty. I’ll help you clean it. If you follow me, I have some soap powder—”

  The girl’s ramblings, combined with the sherry, were making Marjorie dizzy. “Stop, Doris!” The maid instantly fell silent. “I didn’t come out here for you to clean my dress. I wanted to see how you were feeling. I was worried about you.”

  The young woman was quizzical. “Miss?”

  “You seemed so upset, I was concerned you might do something rash.” Marjorie stared at the drawing room door contemptuously. “The way that battle axe treats you is terrible.”

  Doris jumped to her mistress’s defense. “Oh, but you mustn’t call her that,” she flustered.

  “Why not? It suits her. The way she sailed into you, why it—it made me want to pop her one.” Emboldened by the alcohol, she swung her fist. “Right in the nose.”

  The maid bit her lip and suppressed a laugh.

  Marjorie smiled. “It’s safe to laugh, Doris. The Dragon Lady can’t hear you.” The girl complied with a nervous titter.

  Seeing that she had gained the young woman’s trust, Marjorie returned to the objective of her mission. “But, enough about her. How are you?”

  Doris’s cheeks colored and she cast her head downward in an effort to avert the other woman’s inquisitive gaze. “I’m okay,” she said, more to her shoes than to Marjorie. “Mrs. Van Allen just rattles my cage sometimes.”

  “I can understand that,” Marjorie empathized. “Although you seemed to be upset even before she yelled at you.”

  With an intensity that surprised Marjorie, the young woman answered, her face hard and her voice full of venom. “Darn right, I was upset. I was fine when I first walked into the room, but then I heard her talking about Mister Henry. I hate the way she talks about him.” Marjorie half-expected the girl to spit upon the floor, in demonstration of her disgust. “And the poor man dead in his grave, unable to defend himself. She makes it sound like he was crazy and that it was the craziness that killed him. Well, I’ll tell you, it wasn’t craziness that killed him, it was her. She killed her husband! She killed her husband as sure as if she had pushed him from that balcony!” She gasped, as if stunned by her own words, and her face instantly softened. “I’m sorry, miss. I shouldn’t be telling you this. You being her friend and all.”

  Marjorie guffawed loudly. “Me? Her friend? No. I wouldn’t even say we’re good acquaintances. I’ve only just met the woman today, and as far as I can guess, I don’t think she’ll be wanting to see me again any time soon.”

  “Oh, I just thought . . .” Doris trailed off.

  “Forget what you thought,” Marjorie instructed. “Mrs. Van Allen and I have absolutely nothing in common. Why, I’m practically penniless compared to her. That drawing room is nearly as big as my entire house. And we certainly don’t move within the same social circle. You can rest assured that she will never hear a word of what you say to me today.” She tried to steer the conversation back to the topic of Gloria and Henry’s tumultuous relationship. “So, with that said, why don’t you tell me more about Mr. and Mrs. Van Allen? Was their marriage terribly unhappy?”

  “Yes. They—they didn’t get along.” Her eyes darted about the room, nervously. “I should go now.”

  Marjorie, ignoring Doris’s feeble attempt to extricate herself from the conversation, pursued her next line of questioning. “What did they argue about?”

  “I—I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t talk to you anymore.” She glanced from side to side and then added, in a near whisper, “It isn’t safe to talk here. The walls have eyes and ears.”

  Marjorie looked around her as if the sensory organs might be visible. “You’re probably right,” she agreed. “We’ll meet somewhere else and discuss it over coffee.”

  “Oh, I—I’m awfully busy around here,” Doris stammered.

  Marjorie had pulled a scrap of paper and a pen from her purse and was recording her name and telephone number. “But you get a day off, don’t you?”

  Doris’s cooperation as a witness was rapidly waning. “Yes, b-but I use that day for personal errands.”

  Marjorie’s eyes slid surreptitiously toward the drawing room door. There was one way she could convince Doris to talk. She folded the scrap of paper that bore her name and telephone number and handed it to the maid. “Well, if you think of something you’d like to discuss, call me at that number and Mr. Ashcroft and I will meet you as soon as possible.”

  Doris’s face brightened. “Mr. Ashcroft? You mean the gentleman you were with?”

  “Yes,” Marjorie answered casually.

  Doris folded and unfolded the piece of paper with Marjorie’s number and licked her lips eagerly. “He’d . . . um . . . be joining us?”

  “Yes, naturally. Wherever I go, he goes.” In truth, it was the other way around, since Creighton possessed an automobile and she didn’t, but in the words of Mr. Schutt, she was focusing too much on technicalities. “We’re partners, of sorts.”

  “Oh,” Doris replied despondently, and turned her gaze once again to the floor.

  “Business partners,” Marjorie elucidated.

  “Oh.” The maid looked up again and recommenced with her paper folding. “Is he also . . . um . . . like us?”

  “What do you mean, ‘like us’?”

  “Is he part of Mrs. Van Allen’s circle? Or is he practically penniless too?”

  “Creighton? Nope, he’s loaded. Oodles of money.”

  “Oh.” She thrust her hands, still clutching the piece of paper, into the pocket of her apron and yet again gazed, disheartened, down at the floor.

  “But you needn’t worry,” Marjorie consoled, “he’s quite egalitarian.”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s very down to earth,” Marjorie paraphrased.

  Doris’s gaze turned from the floor to the hem of her apron, which she began nervously pleating and unpleating between her nimble fingers. “I think he’s dead handsome,” she blushed.

  “He has his merits, I suppose.” She grinned, a fiendish glint in her eye. “I’m sure he’d be the perfect catch for some lucky girl.”

  “But I’m just a maid,” Doris sighed.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Marjorie demanded as Creighton’s words came flooding back into her memory. “I was always taught that true nobility lies in bearing, not in breeding. Why, from what I’ve seen, you conduct yourself with more grace and charm than Mrs. Van Allen and all her friends thrown together.”

  “Really?” the maid beamed.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I—I think I will meet with you. My day off is Wednesday.” The sound of footsteps
emanated from a location somewhere further down the hall. The young woman glanced behind her. “I should get back to work. I’ll call you.”

  Marjorie watched as Doris scooted down the hallway and admonished herself for her behavior. She had wheedled her way into Doris’s confidence. Naïve, gullible, frumpy Doris! The thought made her slightly nauseous. She moped into the lavatory and closed the door. Standing before the pedestal sink, she examined the sherry stains on her skirt and wondered if they weren’t somehow symbolic of the smudges of dishonor upon her soul.

  She heaved a melancholy sigh and looked up to view her reflection in the mirror. Same blonde hair, same fair skin, and same rosy cheeks. Yes, she was the same person. Her face broke into a wide smile. Her ethics may have been slackening a bit, but she was turning out to be a damn good detective.

  NINE

  “So now I’m Mata Hari,” Creighton asserted. He and Marjorie had left the Van Allen residence and journeyed downtown to The Pelican Club, a popular restaurant and nightspot. They were seated in a cozy, semicircular booth not far from the dance floor, discussing their Wednesday meeting with Doris.

  “I would hardly call you that,” Marjorie contradicted.

  “Oh no? What else do you call someone who has been asked to seduce the enemy in order to gain information?”

  Marjorie clicked her tongue. “No one’s asking you to seduce anyone! Besides, Doris isn’t the enemy. She’s just a maid who might be a valuable witness.”

  “Perhaps,” Creighton argued, “but she’s a maid to Gloria Van Allen, which makes her a member of the enemy camp.” He paused for a few moments. “And if you’re not asking me to seduce the girl, what exactly are you asking me to do?”

  “Nothing,” she cried. “I’m asking you to do nothing other than to be present at our meeting.”

  “So I’m supposed to sit there like a boob?”

  “No,” she nearly sang the word. “Be polite, say hello, smile. Whatever it was you did today that she found so irresistible.”

  “Well, what was that?”

  Marjorie shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m not the one drooling all over you.”

  Creighton winced. As if I need to be reminded. “Speaking of drooling,” he peeked at his watch, “I wonder what’s keeping your dreamboat, Jameson.”

  Marjorie ignored him and took an exaggerated interest in her dinner menu.

  “Oh, well. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.” He picked up his own dinner menu and perused it before speaking again. “I have to tell you, Marjorie, I’m not exactly happy with this whole Doris business.”

  Marjorie looked up from her bill of fare.

  “I feel as if we’re toying with the girl’s emotions. Leading her on, so to speak.”

  “Then don’t lead her on. Act naturally. Be yourself.”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid that my mere presence will be enough to lead her down the garden path. She’s only meeting us because she anticipates that some great romance might develop. The poor girl’s going to be awfully disappointed if I leave the meeting without asking to see her again.” He frowned, and then suddenly his eyes grew wide. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll make myself unattractive to her. That way, she’ll be relieved when I don’t make a move in her direction.”

  “What are you going to do? Glue an artificial wart to the end of your nose?”

  “Not physically unattractive,” Creighton corrected. “Unattractive personality-wise. You know—behave in an irritating manner.”

  Marjorie smirked. “In other words, be yourself.”

  “Miss McClelland, do I sense hostility?” he asked playfully.

  “No.” She turned up her nose.

  “You’re lying,” he accused. “You’re still upset over that comment I passed earlier, in the car.”

  “Maybe.” The writer looked away and fiddled with an earlobe.

  “No, not maybe. You’re angry with me.” He grinned. “I don’t know why you’re so incensed. I merely remarked that I wasn’t above the use of flattery. I never said that I was using it at that particular moment.”

  Marjorie cast him a sideways glance. “Well, were you using it?”

  “Using what?” Creighton asked dumbly.

  “Flattery!” she nearly shouted.

  “That depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “On which one of us is buying dinner tonight.”

  Marjorie stuck out her tongue.

  Creighton smiled and then glanced over her head. “You’d better put that away.” He gestured toward the sliver of pink protruding from her mouth. “Here comes lover boy.”

  Jameson hurried toward the table. “Sorry if I’ve kept you waiting.”

  “No bother,” assured Creighton. “We were just discussing the dinner menu. Marjorie was considering ordering the tongue.”

  She wrinkled her nose at Creighton and then slid to the center of the rounded booth to enable Jameson to sit beside her. “How did everything go with Mrs. Bartorelli?”

  Jameson sat down and took a deep breath. “If you consider a woman who throws herself on the ground screaming to be a positive sign, then my visit was an overwhelming success.”

  “She did all that, did she?” asked an amused Creighton.

  “And more,” the detective answered. “Although I think I brought on some of it myself.”

  “How?” Marjorie inquired.

  “When I told her that her husband was dead, she started to cry. She said she’d never find another man like Victor, so, of course, I asked her if that was such a bad thing.”

  “Oh, no,” mumbled Marjorie and Creighton in unison.

  “Oh, yes,” Jameson affirmed. “She screamed at me in Italian, and then fell to the ground in hysterics—kicking, shrieking, crying, wailing.” He brought his hands to his temples. “I’ll never understand people. I thought she’d be happy to be rid of him.”

  “Talk about your love-hate relationships,” Marjorie commented.

  “Hmm,” agreed Jameson.

  “Did Noonan’s men find anything at Kensington House?” asked the Englishman.

  Jameson pulled a face. “No, I’m giving them one more day. If they don’t find anything by dusk tomorrow, I’ll order them back to the station. This way you can have your house back.”

  Creighton was indifferent. “I never really had the house in the first place.”

  Marjorie interjected, “Did you get anything new on Bartorelli?”

  Jameson shook his head—that, too, was a washout. “How was your afternoon? Better than mine, I hope.”

  “Yes,” Creighton responded. “Although not quite as entertaining.”

  “What did you learn?”

  “Aside from the fact that Mrs. Van Allen wasn’t as passionate about her husband as Mrs. Bartorelli was about hers, not much.” He recounted the events of their meeting with Gloria Van Allen.

  “Did you mention Bartorelli?”

  “Yes, when I was alone with Mrs. Van Allen and her brother-in-law. Other than not recognizing the name at first, they showed little or no reaction.”

  “So your afternoon was about as successful as mine.”

  “As far as information is concerned, yes. However, we did make some inroads. Gloria invited us to a party she’s throwing on Friday.”

  “Correction: she invited you to the party,” rectified Marjorie.

  “Yes, but she told me to bring a guest. That would be you.”

  “She doesn’t want that guest to be me. She’s probably at home right now, wishing that I come down with the grippe.”

  Jameson smirked. “Is it safe to assume that you and the Widow Van Allen didn’t get along well?”

  “Like oil and vinegar.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Creighton differed. “You may not like the woman, but I don’t think she totally abhors you. After all, she did give you that check before we left.”

  “She only wrote that check to get rid of me. She doesn’t want to hear about the Ladies Lit
erary Whatchamacallit again.”

  Jameson pricked up his ears. “A check?”

  “Yes,” Marjorie laughed. “It’s actually kind of funny. Creighton introduced me as the head of some hoity-toity charitable organization. The Ridgebury Women’s Book Club or something like that. Well, he must have been very convincing, because she sent me off with a contribution.”

  “You mean you accepted a donation from her?” Jameson asked in disbelief.

  “I had to,” stated Marjorie matter-of-factly. “If I had refused it, I would have given away the whole charade.”

  “But you can’t take money from these people,” the detective argued.

  “It’s only a little bit of money,” Creighton stated dismissively.

  “No it isn’t. It’s five hundred dollars.” Marjorie removed the check from her handbag and passed it to Creighton. “Here. Have a look.”

  He took the piece of paper and examined it. “Hmm. Gloria mustn’t have remembered the name of our group either. She wrote the check out to you.” He handed it back to her. “That means you can cash it.”

  “No, you can’t cash it,” Jameson exclaimed.

  Marjorie placed her hand on the detective’s arm. “I know how you feel. I was uncomfortable about accepting it at first, too. But then I realized that she can well afford it.”

  “That’s not the point. The two of you conned her out of that money.”

  Marjorie gasped. “We did not! She gave us that money quite willingly. We never asked her for a dime!”

  “It doesn’t matter. You misrepresented yourselves; that constitutes fraud. I could have you both arrested for this.”

  “Well! That’s a fine note of thanks, isn’t it? After we spent all afternoon doing your dirty work.”

  “I never asked you to do my dirty work. You offered to visit Mrs. Van Allen.” He looked to Creighton for aid, but the Englishman held up his hands to show he had nothing to offer.

  “That makes it even worse!” Marjorie raged. “You threatening to arrest two good-natured volunteers!” She took a deep breath and looked at Jameson with moist green eyes full of hurt. “Really, Robert, I expected more from you.”