Mother Finds a Body

by Craig Rice

  Biff sauntered over to Corny. He put his hands on his hips and looked down at the grinning comic.

  “Now that you know, I can ask you a few questions,” he said.

  “You ain’t goin’ to ask me a thing, see? From now on I’m head man around here. That is, unless you’d like your friend, the sheriff, to know what’s buried out in the woods. Any questions to be asked, I’m just the little boy to do the asking.” Corny laughed up in Biff’s face. “That’ll look swell in the papers, too,” Corny said. “It’ll be the end of your and your Goddamned high-brow burlesque-queen wife.”

  Biff got him first. A very neat one-two right on the eye. When his head hit the day bed, Mother gave him a quick one for luck. I handled the other eye. But nicely.

  We didn’t bother explaining that the sheriff knew all about the body.

  “I’ll drive him into town,” Mandy said. “One body under the bed is enough.”

  He picked up Corny’s bag and booted the comic through the door. In a second I heard the loud knock of the truck and the swoosh of the tires in the dust.

  Mother never looked happier. She downed her hot toddy in one gulp and threw her arms around Biff.

  “You were wonderfull” she said.

  Biff and I looked at each other. Biff shrugged his shoulders. I shrugged mine. Mandy’s remark about the body under the bed had evidently escaped Mother’s attention, but it hadn’t escaped ours.

  Dimples burst into the room.

  “Hey, what’s all this about bodies under my bed?” she demanded.

  “Not your bed,” Mother corrected her. “It was under the bed in the back room. In the bathtub.”

  Dimples’ chin sagged. Her mouth fell open.

  “Gawdamighty!” she gasped. “When I heard Corny talking I thought it was a gag!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Why don’t people tell me these things?” Dimples said. “Here I am, my opening night in a saloon, with all my worries about breaking in a new orchestra, worrying about my spotlight cues, worrying about my make-up, worrying about how I’m going to go over, worrying about a million things, and out of a clear blue sky I hear we got corpses under the bed.”

  “Corpse,” Biff said patiently, “not corpses. And it isn’t there now, so quit beefin’. If it had been up to me you would have known about it the minute I did. The sheriff wanted it kept quiet until he got a line on who the guy was. He didn’t want anyone to know until …”

  “Does he know now?” Dimples asked.

  “Sort of,” Biff replied. “The way they got it figured out, he’s two guys. He’s George, our best man, and he’s Gus, a guy who sold perfume backstage at the Burbank.”

  “If he’s the Gus I know,” Dimples said, “I’m damned glad some one got him. Of all the cheap, lowdown, miserable sons of …”

  “Easy on the dialogue,” Gee Gee said. “They still don’t know who killed him. People hear you talking, they’ll think maybe you did. It’s not noly Gus. They got another one, too.”

  “Another what?” Dimples asked.

  “Another corpse. What did you think,” Mother spoke sharply. She was getting annoyed with the conversation. “And please get off that bed, I just fixed it.”

  Dimples jumped up from the bed and smoothed the coverlet. She punched up the three pillows until they were fresh-looking. Then she whirled around and faced Biff.

  “Two of ’em?” she shrieked. “Under my bed, yet.”

  I thought she was going to faint. So did Biff. He reached out to catch her, but Dimples changed her mind. Fainting wouldn’t solve the problem at the moment, and she seemed to realize it.

  “What are we going to do about it?” she asked calmly.

  Biff shrugged his shoulders. “It has nothing to do with us. From now on it’s up to the police.”

  “I hope you’ll remember that,” Mother said to Biff. She was busily putting back the groceries. “Dragging everything out; then leaving it for someone else to put back. Butting in where you don’t belong. You’ll see …” Mother slammed the pantry door shut. “The first thing you know they’ll be third-degreeing all of us all because of your big mouth. If you had only let well enough alone, let me handle it the way I wanted to. But no, you have to go and tell everything you know. Ruin all my good work, and for what?”

  Biff put his arms around Mother and hugged her. “Come on, Evangie, smile. There won’t be any third-degreeing while I’m around. Questions, sure. After all, the body was in our trailer. We did know who it was. We did sort of put ourselves out on a limb when we buried him.”

  “We?” Mother exclaimed. “I love the way you give yourself all the credit.”

  Dimples had been listening with her mouth wide open. She shook her head once or twice.

  “That’s all, brother,” she said after Mother finished speaking. “I’m taking myself a hotel room. Egg crate, flea bag, any kind of hotel is better than this. Burying a corpse!” She kept shaking her head as though she couldn’t believe it. She looked at Gee Gee. “Did you know about this?”

  “Yep,” Gee Gee said. “I was in on the ground floor.”

  Mamie banged on the screen door. “Will someone help me, please?”

  Biff opened the door, and Mamie struggled in with an ironing board.

  “I’ve been all over this camp trying to borrow an ironing board,” she said as she propped it against the side of the trailer. “You’d think people would travel with one. I know I’m completely lost without an …”

  “And what,” Gee Gee asked, “do you want with an ironing board?”

  “Why, I want to press Dimples’ acting dresses,” Mamie said quietly.

  We didn’t have an answer for that. The acting dresses was too much for us. I was glad that Mandy returned at that moment with the truck. The ride into town would be cool, I thought, and getting away from Restful Grove would be a relief, too.

  Mamie, with her ironing board, iron, and a pressing pad, climbed into the back of the truck. Dimples, with her costumes over her arm, got in beside her. Mother with her asthma powder, Biff with a bottle, and Mandy carrying his theater wardrobe sat in front. I sat in the back with the girls.

  “What about Corny?” Dimples asked Mandy through the back window as we drove toward town. “Did he find a hotel?”

  “Yeah,” Mandy said. “Only you know him. He won’t put out that buck a night when he can pile in with us for free. He’ll be back.”

  “Over my dead body,” I said. The minute the words were out I regretted them. Not that the sentiments weren’t right; it was mentioning a dead body that made me feel uncomfortable. Especially mentioning it as my own.

  “How was his eye?” I asked to change the subject.

  “I put a hunk of steak on it for him,” Mandy said. The headlights of the truck were dim and flickering. Mandy peered through the dusty windshield and leaned forward as he drove.

  “I left him at the sheriff’s,” Mandy said casually. “He had to shoot off his mouth, Corny, I mean, and I thought he might just as well go to the head man while he was doing it. I wouldn’t be a damn bit surprised if Hank didn’t throw him in the clink. Boy, it was a rich scene. There’s Corny all set to make Hank’s eyes pop, and Hank just sits there and listens quiet-like. Corny builds it up, holding the corpse for the blackout, and just when he gets to spring it, Hank gets in ahead of him.

  “‘And why didn’t you tell me about this murder a day ago?’ Hank asks him. Then Corny starts sweating. He can’t answer that one and he knows it. Hank answers it for him. ‘In Ysleta,’ he says, ‘we got a name for guys like you. Blackmailers, we call ’em.’”

  “And what did Corny say to that?” Mother asked.

  “What can he say?” Mandy exclaimed. “He blustered a bit, but Hank was too close to the truth for Corny to get much gumption in it.”

  “Well,” Mamie said politely after everyone had finished talking. “I hope he shows up for the performance. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all act.”

  “For f
orty bucks he’ll show all right,” Mandy said.

  The back of the truck was built for coal, wood, ice. For humans, no. At least not living humans. I could just manage to crawl down from it when we arrived at The Happy Hour. I ached in every bone. Matter of fact, I think I found a few bones to ache in that I didn’t know I had.

  Dimples felt it, too, but Mamie hopped down like an acrobat. She was all for carrying the ironing board right through the front entrance of the saloon until Biff took it from her and explained there was a stage entrance.

  Mandy and I walked over to the gaudy saloon entrance. We wanted to see the billing. Cullucio had certainly splurged in his adjectives. According to him, his three new actors were “colossal, supersensational, terrific.”

  “Everything but talented,” Mandy remarked.

  Dimples’ pictures were plastered all over the entrance. A huge easel held four more. The one where she held a white fox fur up in front of her was center. One in black lace with a back light silhouetting the body was to the left. There was one large, smiling head. How that got mixed up with the nudes, I’ll never know. Maybe Cullucio wanted the customers to know she had a head; I’m sure they wouldn’t have guessed it from looking at the others.

  My favorite picture of her was also on the easel. It was one Dimples had made years ago, but somehow she hadn’t changed much. She was peeking from around a screen, showing just the side of her body. A suggestion of a garter belt, black lacy hose, and a bare breast. Someone had drawn a mustache on Dimples’ mouth. She was billed, I noticed, as an Earl Carroll beauty.

  “Carroll’ll get the shock of his life when he finds that out,” Mandy said.

  He and Corny were billed as “Cobb and Hill. Those Two Funny Fellows. Songs, Dances, and Witty Sayings.”

  “That’s done it,” I said. “I’m going around the back way. Passing that billing is worse than passing a picket line.”

  Mandy took one last fond look. Then he followed me.

  Finding the stage entrance was easy. We just followed an order of dishwater, sour floor mops, and slightly spoiled food. The door was between two large garbage cans. It entered into a kitchen. The cook didn’t look up as we hurried past him. I was just as pleased. I have seen cooks before, but this one had enough bacteria on his apron front alone to wipe out the Japanese army.

  The dressing room was to the right and opened into a long, narrow room that had once been a hallway, judging from the dimensions. It was directly behind the stage, and if the actors wanted to get from one side of the stage to the other, they had to walk through. The wardrobe hung on nails along the back wall. That left a space of two feet between the wall and the make-up shelf. None of the girls were in yet.

  “What about my dressing room?” Mandy asked.

  I couldn’t tell him. I had a hunch that there just wasn’t any, but he could find that out for himself.

  “Ask Cullucio,” I said, and Mandy left with a look of determination on his face.

  The girls had made a clearing on the shelf for Dimples. The six inches of shelf allotted to her was at the far end of the room. The door opened in, and Dimples would have to get up from her chair each time anyone wanted in or out.

  “They certainly aren’t knocking themselves out being sociable,” Dimples said. “I’d be more comfortable in the ladies’ room.”

  I helped her unwrap her costumes and make-up, while Mamie plugged in the iron. Biff had set up the ironing board, and Mamie was puttering about nervously. Mother was having herself a time reading the different post cards and letters the chorus girls had been stupid enough to leave in the dressing room. She was very quick about it and I noticed that she hadn’t lost the knack of placing the things back just as they were before. Mother prided herself on that.

  Gee Gee sat in front of one of the mirrors and put on a full make-up, even to a blue eye shadow and heavy cosmetic on her lashes.

  “It seems years since I made up,” she remarked. Her voice sounded a little homesick.

  As crowded and uncomfortable as the room was, there was a smell of theater about it, a smell that made me homesick, too. I watched Dimples as she began putting on her body paint. Even at forty a week I rather envied her.

  “Gimme the sponge,” I said. “I’ll do your back.”

  Dimples used a flat-white body paint. It looked well in a blue spotlight, but in the harsh light of the dressing room it made her flesh look dead. She roughed the nipples of her breasts while I smoothed the white liquid on her back.

  “Opening nights always terrify me,” Dimples said. “I’m as nervous as a cat. First time in a night club and everything. The stage is so small, and instead of it going longways, it goes up and down. I’ll feel so silly doing my number up and down. And having the audience so close to me.”

  “Close?” Gee Gee said. “Say, if they wanted to, they could reach out and touch you!”

  “Omigawd!” Dimples said angrily. “You coulda gone all day without reminding me of that!”

  Mamie finished the pressing. She gazed proudly at the fresh-looking costumes as she hung them near Dimples’ place. She put the hot iron under the shelf and refolded the ironing board. She was almost as nervous as Dimples. Her hands were actually trembling as she fumbled at the doorknob.

  “Come along,” she said to Mother and Gee Gee. “We don’t want to miss the first part.”

  Dimples closed the door behind them. She leaned her back against it for a moment before she spoke.

  “You know, Gyp,” she said slowly. “There’s something about that Mamie that gets me. It’s the way she looks at me. Like I was a—well—a tramp or something. Then the next minute she knocks herself out doing favors for me. I don’t like it.”

  “Maybe she’s awed,” I suggested.

  “What’s awed?” Dimples narrowed her eyes as she asked.

  “I mean, maybe the thought of all of us being actors has sort of thrown her.”

  My explanation soothed the Queen of Quiver. She sat heavily in the chair and began blending her whitish grease paint. I knew Dimples, but if I hadn’t I would have formed a few choice opinions of her myself, especially as she sat there at the make-up shelf.

  Her stomach was relaxed and it fell into three flabby folds. Her wiry yellow hair was curled tightly about her full face. The center part was growing in darker, and Dimples patted it gingerly with her powder puff. The dead-white body with the roughed breasts and the powdered hair did make her seem unusual. That is, if you didn’t know her.

  “Well,” I said. “You can redeem yourself tonight. What number are you opening with?”

  “Have a Smoke on me,” Dimples said brightly. “I think the place in ripe for an audience number, don’t you?”

  The room began filling with tired-looking chorus girls. They weren’t very sociable. Without a word to Dimples or to me, they settled themselves before their shelves and started making up. Even Millie and Clarissima were silent. After a moment I realized it wasn’t rudeness so much as dullness. They just weren’t awake yet. I was in the way, so I squeezed past the yawning girls and, after whispering “Good luck” to Dimples, I went out front.

  In the main room I noticed that some of the early customers were taking their lives in their hands and eating the Chef’s Special, a steak sandwich with limp French fries. On the side, for decorative purposes only, was one leaf of lettuce with a slice of soggy tomato. I couldn’t watch the customers eat. Not with that picture of the chef’s apron still in my mind.

  Through the smoky haze I saw Mother and Mamie. They were sitting near the cloakroom very much as though they were sitting in the first row of the Roxy Theater. Mother’s eyes traveled leisurely around the room. To anyone else it would have appeared as though she were quite disinterested. I knew better. I knew Mother was counting the house.

  Gee Gee and Biff were at the bar. I joined them.

  “Well, how goes it?” Biff asked me as I pulled up a stool and settled into it.

  “If you mean the dressing room,” I said, �
�it’s intimate.”

  Mandy appeared from the crowd and sat next to me.

  “Well, dressing room or no dressing room, it’s for me,” he said. “This gag of doing only two shows a night and having a bar so handy. It’s a racket. Me, what’s four a day since I got in the business and here I am with bankers’ hours already. It’s like stealing the dough.”

  We had one round on that. Then Joyce came in. No stage doors for the prima donna, I noticed. She made her entrance with the carriage trade, right through the front door. Naturally Biff asked her to join us and naturally she did. The bartender handed Biff the check.

  Joyce drained her glass. Then she said, “That goes on mine.”

  The bartender smiled. “The hell it does, girlie. They was drinking before you came in. You’d chisel your own grandmother, so help me, you would.”

  Joyce laughed softly.

  “Well, can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said. “See you all later and thanks for the drink.” She gave Biff a long, slow smile.

  It was supposed to suggest a thousand intimate moments, but Biff wasn’t having any. His rye with a beer chaser was more important.

  Joyce sauntered through the room. As she passed the door with OFFICE-OFFICIO written above it, she stopped and tapped gently. There was no response. She tried the knob. It wouldn’t open. Joyce started backstage. She walked slowly, letting her full hips sway from side to side. As she passed each table she paused for an instant. The customers were too sober to want company. Most of them didn’t bother to look at her. I knew that once she got into her blue satin or her cerise velvet it would be easy sailing, but until then she’d drink alone.

  The bartender was busily polishing glasses. He saw me watching Joyce.

  “She’s a damn-good mixer,” he said. “Makes more dough than all the other dames put together.” There was a note of respect in his voice. “But is she a chiseler! If those other dames knew how she works ’em, the fur would sure fly.” He hadn’t dropped the respectful tone. If anything, it was more pronounced. “Yes, sir, she sure knows her way around.”

  Biff ordered another round, and the bartender kept talking while he poured the drinks.