Murder at the Flamingo

by Rachel McMillan

  “I hated that picture.” Vaughan’s nose wrinkled at the recollection of Platinum Blonde, a Jean Harlow feature Reggie was besotted with. It took the brash, brainy reporter played by Robert Williams the length of almost the entire picture before he realized he wasn’t in love with the beautiful bow-lipped Harlow, but rather the smart, hardworking reporter played by Loretta Young. Reggie was always more Young than Harlow.

  “It’s because you didn’t understand sometimes life is more than the glitz of parties and the broad Roman columns of a grand estate.”

  “Like your parents.” Vaughan’s tone was rimmed with irony.

  “I am not my parents.”

  “With certain breeding comes certain responsibility, Regina.”

  “Don’t call me Regina and . . . Vaughan—Vaughan, stop! Vaughan, what are you doing?”

  Vaughan gripped her forearm, tugging her across the lawn to the middle of the looming crowd.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This is all you’ve ever needed, Regina, a little shove into the future.” Vaughan was radiant. “Dear friends, family, and esteemed colleagues. I am the happiest man alive. Miss Regina Van Buren has just consented to be my wife.”

  Regina spluttered but no words came out. Her mother gasped with delight. The rose garland of debutantes conjured up smiles to hide their jealousy.

  When the applause erupted into the otherwise calm evening, Reggie tried to run but found Vaughan’s hold on her stronger than ever. Vaughan’s rowing lessons, apparently, were going quite well.

  Not having a full glass of detested chardonnay to throw in Vaughan’s face, Reggie settled for swerving out of his grip, standing back, raising her forearm, and slapping him across the cheek.

  Her parents were mortified and the rose garden of debutantes withered. A New Haven Van Buren did not slap her intended—even if she had never entered into a marriage contract and intended anything but marriage to the man who had just claimed her in front of half of New Haven’s most prestigious society.

  After an eternity of awkward exchanges with guests who didn’t even attempt to conceal their judgment, Regina decided the only thing she could do was run. Jean Arthur would run. Katharine Hepburn would run. Myrna Loy would run. No, Myrna Loy would sprint.

  Moments later, guests spared the Van Burens further embarrassment by leaving in cars waxed to a shine they could catch their reflection in and Reggie fumed safely in the confines of her childhood bedroom. She threw stockings, dresses, hats, gloves, her journal, and a threadbare teddy bear in a poor jumble into a suitcase and arranged for a maid to assemble a trunk to be sent to General Delivery, Boston, all while attempting to ignore the rising voices of her parents from the foyer below.

  “A Van Buren does not treat a man that way regardless of what a Van Buren thinks might have been done to slight her!” Reggie’s mother’s voice intersected desperation and fury.

  Her father was a different kind of angry: the patronizing tolerance he used when proudly asserting his position before a board of directors. “We must respect Regina is still learning.”

  “She was to marry Vaughan Vanderlaan.” Her mother was at the end of her rope. “She doesn’t have the social graces of the other girls. She has too much rattling in that brain of hers and Vaughan never seemed to mind. Vaughan seemed to like that. What more could she possibly ask for?”

  The end sentence was uttered at an amplified volume and Reggie knew her mother had moved directly under the landing so her words would certainly creep through the crack under Reggie’s closed door.

  In the end, and rather devoid of grace, Reggie tumbled out the window and scrambled down an old oak, snagging her nylons and scuffing her saddle shoe, then ran panting in the slick gray cold of a misty morning to the train station. She found a milk-run train at dawn.

  When Claudette Colbert spent a night on a bus with Clark Gable, she had been able to keep her mane perfectly intact. Not Reggie Van Buren. She looked like some strange drunken raccoon arisen from poor sleep, navigating the sudden glare of sun as her heels clopped over the cobblestones of the city.

  Yet soon enough, she had replaced the small talk about boats and varsity tryouts and stocks swapped at her parents’ garden parties with celebrity gossip at the communal dining table until the landlady barked it was immoral. She saw Platinum Blonde three times at the Royal, liking more than ever the way Loretta Young could fit into any situation, even as she was just one of the guys: Robert Williams’s reliable Gallagher and the smartest girl in the newsroom.

  Reggie didn’t dry her stockings on the radiator or let her kettle boil long enough for it to screech a vehement protest that could be heard across the hall. No, she colored inside the lines as much as possible for a girl who had left all she had known (including her parents’ good opinion) behind.

  She used the contents of Luca Valari’s envelope for new oxfords—so she wouldn’t have to take the jagged North End stones in heels—and drug-store lipstick. Then celebrated with ice cream and the pictures. Imagine! A young woman unescorted sliding down into the red velvet of RKO Keith’s on Washington Street, snickering over an Irene Dunne double feature. In the shadows cut through by the projector, its beam lighting little dust specks around her, Reggie was suddenly aware of the absence of someone beside her, the whisper of Vaughan’s tailored shirt over her bare arm. The scent of him. Vaughan . . . Vaughan wasn’t to blame for the world that bred him. Regardless, she fell under the spell of the story soon enough, and the feel of Vaughan’s fingers intertwined with hers was just a phantom sensation. Was she really trying to escape him, or was she using him as the catalyst needed to break free of her parents’ world? Maybe it wasn’t Vaughan. Maybe it was his association with a world she wanted to leave behind.

  CHAPTER 3

  Poach an egg. Surely one of the easier tasks to fulfill in her Journal of Independence.

  Easier said than done, Fanny Farmer. Eggs were sticky and runny. She was proud enough she had secured a hot plate that she, like many of the other girls, kept in a box she slid under her bed, disguising the burned attempts of her culinary efforts with spritzes of rosewater.

  Back home, eggs arrived like fluffy white scoops, perfectly rounded. Here, they ran over the side of the pan. Reggie straightened her shoulders in combat mode and sucked at the red mark on her pointer finger. She slid the gummy disaster into her waste bin and cracked two more eggs into a mug. Then she filled the pan with the requisite amount of water, added the recipe’s dictated amount of oil, and tried again. And tried again.

  And then again and again until they were more than congealed globs. She added a pinch of salt and scooped the eggs from the pan to her now-cold toast, watching the yellow liquid spread over the bread. Her hunger pangs had been replaced by the incense of frustration, but nonetheless, she scooped a small bite.

  Cold toast . . . poached eggs that looked passable on the outside but were a little overdone on the inside—it wasn’t perfect. But never mind! She crossed it off in her journal. Then she fixed her collar and smoothed her hair and collected her fare for the train.

  Out the train window, boats gulped in from the Atlantic beyond and the dimpled ripples of water winked in the morning sun. She pressed her nose to the glass, drinking in the sight. When the train shrieked over the tracks and stopped, she disembarked at North Washington and joined the pulse of the city. The North End awakened with the scent of baking, lines of laundry strung like monochrome rainbows conjoining brick buildings snugged together over the warped cobblestones. Her flat oxfords were a welcome reprieve from years of calf-straining Spanish heels, especially over the uneven stones of the North End.

  Children free of school for the summer jumped rope, scattered jacks on the redbricks, rimmed the fountain with arms outstretched for balance, and exchanged secrets under the border of trees.

  Freedom yawned over the jutting balconies and sighed with the scent of fresh pastries wafting from Leoni’s.

  Finally, she reached the North Square and t
he office came into view with a now familiar cacophony of sound and bustle from slightly opened doors. Luca Valari’s name sat boldly on the frosted glass. She reached into her handbag for her keys and jiggled the correct one into the knob.

  Reggie hung up her bag and hat on the stand, then smoothed her skirt. She wanted to prove worthy of the inflated salary he offered her, but answering the occasional phone call from Chicago was not enough to earn her keep. Her enamel file was worn down from midday filing. She had finished three novels, and a new Packard Bell model radio was still warm from her constant spin of the dials until Winchester Molloy: New York Gumshoe crackled over the airwaves at three in the afternoon. Luca had a wireless in case she found herself in need of entertainment beyond her duties. As her duties for the past few weeks had been little more than fretting over the arrival of her parents’ inevitable response to the letter she had sent them after she half tumbled out her bedroom window, the radio had proven a much-needed reprieve. She had been staring at her nails for hours. A knock at the door and a shadow beyond the milky window stirred her.

  Reggie looked up. Through the crease in the half-open door, a pleasant-faced young man with a kippah over his dark hair peeked in.

  “Well, you are not Luca Valari,” he greeted, strolling in, a paper package in his right hand.

  Reggie rose. “I am his secretary, Regina Van Buren.” She extended her hand.

  “Nathaniel Reis.” His fingers were chalk-dust light over her palm. His smile was bright, eyes sparkling. “North End Housing and Development. No one calls me Nathaniel but my mother, and only when she is angry with me. It’s Nate.”

  “And no one calls me Regina but my mother’s bridge club. I’m Reggie.”

  “I was hoping to find Luca and bribe him with cannoli.” His eyes roamed up to the ceiling, over to the window, and down to the cracked wooden baseboards where they met the horizon of peeling wallpaper. His eyes crinkled. “Reggie.” He tried the name on for size. “I will just give it to you instead. You probably deserve it more. I’ve heard that you can’t buy Luca with money. He gets suspicious. But cannoli?”

  Reggie reached out and accepted the gift. The closer the package, the more acutely the smell of fried dough and cream filling infiltrated her senses. “Thank you.” She smiled. “Why would you want to buy Luca?”

  Nate shrugged and took a beat. “Oh, you’re pretty,” he said, not with a cadence of flirtation, but rather of certainty. “Of course you’re pretty.”

  Reggie laughed awkwardly and looked into the package. “You want one?”

  “Mrs. Leoni’s kitchen is far from kosher,” he said, a glint of humor in his eyes. “But please, indulge. A North End bouquet.” He smiled. “She’s the nicest lady. Her bakery is just at the corner of the square. By Prince? You’ve seen it, I’m sure. Yellow awning. Hard to miss.”

  Nate’s eyes sparkled with kindness. She pushed through a curtain of pretension and found that speaking with an open, smiling human with no expectation rimming the conversation was a fresh delight. “Been here for two years,” he continued. “Seen so many people come and go and come and go. But I know the ropes. Hot out today. Do you smell it?”

  “Smell what?”

  “The molasses. From the factory disaster back in the olden days. On sticky hot days the ghost of smell wafts over our little neighborhood here.”

  Reggie reached into the bag and extracted an oblong pastry. It looked and smelled divine. Her upbringing, however, prevented her from tasting it in front of a new acquaintance, so she held it out to him in a slight toast before setting it on the desk behind her.

  “If you need anything, just let me know,” Nate said. He pressed the crook of his finger to his temple. “I’ll see you around then.”

  “See you around.” Reggie smiled even after he had left, his friendly face reminding her she might not be so very alone here after all. Then she turned back to the pastry. It would be difficult, she deciphered, looking at the cream filling spilling out the sides like clouds, to taste the cannoli daintily. Like a lady. She dipped a manicured finger into the filling and lifted the soft concoction to her tongue. It was a subtly sweet explosion of cheesy fluff. Reggie melted. She peered over one shoulder and then the other. Assuredly alone, she lifted the pastry and took a large bite, her teeth cracking the fried dough, the icing coating her mouth and wreaking havoc on her lipstick and face powder, she was sure. Reggie finished the dessert much too quickly and reached for a handkerchief. She dabbed at the sides of her mouth and inspected the damage in her compact mirror. Then she sat back in her chair, let the sun stream through the blinds, and smiled. Mrs. Leoni’s cannoli—if nothing else—was worth uprooting from New Haven for.

  CHAPTER 4

  When the train finally pulled into Boston’s South Station, Hamish startled straight. He had ripped a paper napkin to shreds. He was really doing this. He wasn’t somewhere in the in-between. He was in another city in another country. In Luca’s world.

  Centuries-old ghosts hovered over the redbricks and flickered in the dance of the sun’s rays as Hamish stepped into Boston for the first time. Hamish had the propensity to connect with places easily. He supposed it was his desire to immediately find safety and familiarity in the unknown. He waited for Luca at the appointed spot and the city introduced itself to him in waves of people coming and going. Hamish fingered the handle on his suitcase. A girl smiled at him in passing and he gave her a quick smile in return. He studied the streetlights and memorized the span of Atlantic Avenue, cramming as many details in his brain as he could, from the neoclassical grandeur of the golden-bricked station to the towering buildings in his line of sight. His father had told him that the moment he first saw Toronto from the deck of a boat, he knew he had found his world. His home. Hamish stared at the dulling sun spreading over his first view of Boston and wondered if he felt the same.

  “Hamish DeLuca?” A broad-shouldered man strode toward him.

  “That’s me.”

  “Mr. Valari sent me. I’ve a car waiting.”

  Hamish picked up his suitcase, but the man stopped him and tugged the bag away with a strong grip. Hamish thanked him, hiding his disappointment that his cousin wasn’t there to greet him in the unfamiliar city. Not unfamiliar, Hamish coached himself as he followed the man to a sleek car nearby. Hamish looked around again, his eyes settling on buildings he had already seen until the surroundings were less strange. He smiled as the man opened the rear passenger door.

  Hamish slid in. The driver was silent, giving Hamish the opportunity to study the city outside the window. Washington Street, with its snail-slow traffic and bright marquees, reminded him of Yonge Street. Imparting some of his own city’s characteristics into this new place would help with familiarity. And soon it would feel comfortable and he would breathe a little easier and the fingers clenched into his palm would fall into repose. The driver sped up and turned rapidly at a traffic light, slowing only for a crossing pedestrian then pressing harder on the gas, swerving from Winter Street to the corner of Tremont. Outside the window, Hamish could make out the great golden dome of a nearby building.

  “What is that?” he asked the driver, pointing from the back seat through the windshield.

  “Massachusetts State House,” the driver said in a tone that forbade any further questions.

  “And what is—”

  “I drive. I’m not a tour guide. But that’s the Common.” He inclined his head toward the large span of green, a fountain erupting, people scurrying from the subway below the Park Street Station.

  The driver helped him with his suitcase, transferring it to the doorman. Inside, the concierge told him he was expected in the penthouse.

  Of course. Hamish’s eyes widened at the sleek foyer, tall walls, and marble columns. He had stepped into Luca’s world and, not for the first time, hoped he could learn its language.

  Hamish followed a bellboy with his luggage in tow to the lift. Encased by the mirrored cube, he took a moment to inspect himself: tous
led black hair, pale skin, and a slanting nose. He hadn’t removed his thick reading glasses after the train ride and they magnified his bright blue eyes.

  The elevator dinged. Hamish crossed the tiled floor to the penthouse suite. If there was a doorbell, he didn’t see it, so he knocked instead.

  He was greeted by a woman who might have been attractive had she taken the time with a little makeup or curlers in the limp brown hair peeking out of her cap. Hamish thought her features looked soft—and the way she smoothed her skirt as he stepped through the door made him think she did care about the impression she made, or at least she once had. She was an odd contrast to the grand entrance and the strange, framed swirls of color that probably cost a fortune adorning the foyer where he stood.

  Luca approached and threw his arms around Hamish’s neck. “Cicero!” His voice was bright. He stepped back, his hand still crooking the back of Hamish’s neck. He looked like he had stepped out of a collar ad in the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Hamish’s smile spread wide.

  “It’s been so long,” Hamish said. “Christmas last year, wasn’t it? I didn’t even know you had moved.” Luca’s eyes looked a little tired and his face was thinner, but he still had his characteristic charm; it hung off his shoulders like a cavalier embrace.

  “Cic, this is Fidget.” He indicated the lady who answered the door. “She keeps me in line.”

  “You need it!” Fidget swatted Luca. She turned her attention to Hamish and smiled kindly. “Ah. Yes. This is a nice face.” She grinned up at Hamish and patted him gently on the arm. “You are a good influence on this rapscallion here.”

  “I hope so, ma’am.” Hamish inclined his head in a respectful bow.

  “No! No ‘ma’ams.’ You must call me Fidget, and I shall call you—” She looked away. “Luca! What is your friend’s name?”