Teetotaled

by Maia Chance

  The attendant squeezed past Grace’s dress, Berta, and me and scuttled away.

  “Well?” Grace said. “Come to spy on me some more? Or maybe to laugh at me in this monstrous thing?”

  “I … I really don’t know what to say about the gown,” I said.

  “How about it was the height of fashion in 1897? Unbutton me, will you? Golly, I can’t even breathe.” Grace turned, and Berta started picking at a long row of satin-covered buttons.

  “We’d like to speak to you some more about the Morris deaths,” I said, “and about your diary.”

  “Can’t. I’m just leaving.” Grace stepped out of the dress, leaving it mountained on the floor. Her torso was embalmed in one of those S-bend corsets the Gibson Girls adored. “I’m going to keep this awful corset on because it would make me about an hour late if I tried to unlace it. Anyway, my waistline doesn’t look half bad in it.”

  “Late for what?” I asked.

  “I still wear a corset,” Berta said. “Those modern girdles offer no more support than a bath towel.”

  Grace was tugging on a fashionable blue cotton dress with a dropped waist and a wide sash. She smoothed her golden bob, put on a low-brimmed straw hat, and picked up her handbag. “Sorry. I must dash.”

  “But where are you going?” I asked.

  “I’ll kill you if you tell Mother.”

  “We won’t,” I said.

  Grace lowered her voice. “Yankee Stadium. It’s Petey’s first game since his nerve treatment. If you wish to talk, you’ll have to come along—would you like tickets to the game? Petey told me a bunch would be waiting for me at the ticket office. He said the seats were right behind the dugout, whatever that means.”

  “Oh my,” Berta breathed.

  “You’re sneaking off to see Pete Schlump?” I said. “I was under the impression that you planned to go ahead with your marriage to Gil Morris.”

  “Never! I’m just playing along to keep Mother from shipping me off to her family in Philadelphia. Petey was hiding out at the Plaza till things blew over, but he telephoned just before Mother and I left for the city this morning and asked me to come to the game. Said it’s ever so important that I see him play and that he’s got something he wants to ask me. And then, well, I suppose we’ll run away together after that. I’ve got big dreams to be a star, and Petey’s going to help me.” Grace gave a dramatic sigh. “Poor, sensitive Gil. Maybe he’ll cut off his ear for me like Van Gogh did for his patootie.”

  I guessed Grace was in the dark about Gil, Violet, and Gil’s plans to travel to Europe.

  “We could go to the game if you’ll answer some questions,” I said. Besides, this could be our chance—finally—to talk to Pete Schlump. He was the one suspect from the East Ward whom Berta and I hadn’t yet grilled. “We could offer you a ride, too.”

  “Ducky!” Grace said. “I’m no good at flagging down taxicabs.”

  After Berta made a quick stop in a lavatory off the stockroom, the three of us left Antoinette G. Lovell’s the back way.

  “Hot dog,” Ralph said as we piled into the Duesy. “You snagged Grace again.” He started the engine. “Where to?”

  “It’s funny you mention hot dogs,” I said, “because we’re going to Yankee Stadium.”

  Ralph glanced in the rearview mirror. “Jiminy Christmas.” He hunched down.

  Sophronia Whiddle was trundling down the sidewalk toward us, yelling.

  “Gas it, won’t you?” Grace cried. “Mother really scares me when her hat feather does that quivery thing.”

  Ralph angled into the stream of Fifth Avenue traffic.

  “She’ll tell Mother about seeing me,” I said.

  “You society girls and your mothers,” Berta said. “It is time to cut the apron strings.”

  * * *

  “All right, Grace,” Ralph said over his shoulder, once Sophronia had receded to the size of a tick. “Where’s your diary?”

  Grace had removed her glasses and she hunkered over a mascara compact, wetting the brush with her tongue and laying it on thick. “What’s it to you, mister?”

  “He’s a detective,” I told Grace.

  “Oh, is that supposed to explain everything?” Grace rolled her eyes, nearly stabbing her eyeball with the mascara brush in the process. “If I’d known a whole herd of detectives would be snooping after that diary, I would’ve burned it.”

  “Where is it?” Ralph repeated.

  “It’s gone. Someone stole it from my room at Willow Acres.”

  Ralph groaned. “When?”

  “The last afternoon I was there, sometime after Mrs. Woodby and Mrs. Lundgren were in there looking around. It was Muffy who nicked it. I’m positive. Petey said he saw her tiptoeing out of my room while I was having my hydropathic treatment that afternoon.”

  “Okay,” Ralph said, “and why do you think someone like, oh, I don’t know, someone like Eugene Van Hoogenband might want to get his hands on your diary?”

  “Oh, I know exactly why.”

  Ralph would have seemed as cool as a cocktail shaker if it weren’t for the way his knuckles on the steering wheel turned white.

  “It’s because of what happened last winter,” Grace went on. “Well, not exactly because of what happened last winter, but because I wrote it down. It’s about him, you see. In a way.”

  “Go on,” Ralph said.

  “Josie Van Hoogenband is my best friend—she’s a mean little cat, of course, but she’s always up for some fun—so I spend a whole lot of time at her family’s houses. Last winter, sometime in January, I was at Breakerhead and I couldn’t sneak a ciggy in my usual spot in the rose garden, because it was snowing outside.”

  “That is a filthy habit, young lady,” Berta said.

  Grace took a lipstick from her handbag and uncapped it. “Well, Josie and I were playing backgammon and I was dying for a smoke so I sneaked off to her father’s study because it always stinks like cigars in there so I figured no one would notice if I smoked in there, too. Halfway through my ciggy, I heard men’s voices, so I stubbed it out in the ashtray and hid behind the curtains. Three men came into the study. Mr. Van Hoogenband, Senator Morris—I recognized his voice, since he’s Gil’s dad—and old Obadiah Inchbald in his wheelchair, Gil’s grandfather. Once he pinched my bottom at the horse races.”

  “The three founding members of the Titan Club,” I said.

  “That’s right.” Grace was smearing on lipstick, so her consonants were a little garbled. “They meet regularly, I guess—that’s what Josie told me. They like to keep tabs on everyone and, I don’t know, sort of plan out how to run the show in New York. In business, mostly. Well, they talked and talked until I was just freezing from being against the cold window with that blizzard outside.”

  “What did they talk about?” Ralph asked, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “All sorts of things.” Grace capped the lipstick. “Mr. Van Hoogenband was all riled up about something his younger brother Fizzy had done with a hotel manicurist—gotten married and had a baby with her even though he’s already married—and then there was something about how Obadiah Inchbald’s clothing company became filthy rich back in the Civil War—I don’t know why ancient history like that matters, but they all had kittens about it.”

  “You wrote all of this down in your diary?” Ralph asked.

  “I write everything down. I have a great memory for conversations as long as they’re fresh. They start fading after a day or two. I could be one of those ladies who record things in courtrooms. If I knew how to type, I mean.”

  “If Muffy stole the diary,” I said, “it would be in her personal effects taken from her room at Willow Acres. Gil might have it.”

  “He doesn’t,” Grace said. “I telephoned him last night to ask. He was given a box of his mother’s things, I mean, but he said the diary wasn’t there.”

  “He could’ve been lying,” I said.

  “What else can you remember about that entry, Grace?” Ra
lph asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Think,” Ralph said.

  “Oh, I never do that. It gives you wrinkles.”

  31

  I hadn’t yet been to the brand-new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx—nor the old one. It looked quite like the Colosseum in Rome. We collected tickets reserved for Grace at the ticket office and joined the throngs streaming through doorways. The vast sunlit sweep of the stadium smelled of fresh paint and sod, roasted peanuts, hot dogs, and several thousand overwrought men. Blue sky arched overhead. The white and green of the field dazzled my eyes.

  Berta, Ralph, and I followed Grace to the bottom of the bleachers. Voices hummed and I kept hearing “Schlump, Schlump, Schlump.” Grace made a beeline around the lower perimeter of the seats until we were within a stone’s throw of what I took to be the Yankees dugout. Players in their striped uniforms, caps, and knee-high socks loitered around, gabbing and spitting. Pete Schlump, smaller than the rest of his teammates by a head, stood to one side. Ostracized from the herd.

  With the game starting any minute, I figured I’d have to wait until the intermission—or whatever they called it—to grill Pete about the murders.

  Grace leaned over the railing. “Petey!” she yelled. “Hey, Petey!” She waved wildly.

  “Why don’t you get off the railing, Grace?” I said. “You aren’t wearing your glasses. You could fall.”

  Pete looked over and his face brightened. Grace blew him a kiss and Pete pretended to catch it.

  Ah, the folly of love.

  Speaking of which, I wound up sitting in the aisle seat next to Ralph. He cracked roasted peanuts from a paper bag on his lap and tossed them into his mouth.

  I flicked him a glance. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but if Grace doesn’t know where her diary is, then why are you still sticking around? Shouldn’t you be off tracking it down?”

  “Nope.”

  My stomach cartwheeled. Maybe he was sticking around because he couldn’t bear to part with my sparkling personality and distinct ankles.

  “Don’t you get it, kid?” Ralph said. “If the diary was stolen from Muffy’s room at Willow Acres and it wasn’t in her personal effects, that means the murderer has the diary.”

  Oh. Yeah.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you and Mrs. Lundgren,” Ralph said. “I think you’re hot on the trail and I want to be there when you bag the murderer.” He cracked another peanut. “That’s why I’m sticking around.”

  Did I mention how pleased I was that I hadn’t told this thickheaded, single-minded, gorgeous gink that I was in love with him?

  “If the murderer has the diary,” I said, “then that means the murderer has been leaking those scandalous stories to Ida Shanks at the newspaper.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ralph said. “Smells like an act of vengeance to me.”

  Berta leaned over. “I do agree, Mr. Oliver. Perhaps Beaulah Starr was at one time or another slighted by Obadiah Inchbald—and we know very well why she loathed Senator Morris.” She glanced at her wristwatch. I knew she was counting down the minutes till three o’clock, when she could call the Hare’s Hollow feed store and speak to Beaulah’s friend.

  And perhaps that would be the end of it. Too bad Violet Wilbur couldn’t have been the murderer. I sort of liked Beaulah.

  “HOT dogs!” A vendor yelled, coming down the steps. “Get yer HOT dogs! Pipin’ hot! Mustard, relish, onions, catsup! HOT dogs! Get yer HOT dogs!”

  “You take the works on your hot dogs, don’t you, kid?” Ralph said to me, digging for his wallet.

  How did he know? “I’m not hungry,” I said primly. But who was I kidding? I’d missed lunch and I’d kill for a hot dog with the works.

  Ralph bought two hot dogs with the works, all for me. “Got you some soda pop, too,” he said. “Ginger ale. I’ll hold it till you have a free hand.”

  “You’re a knight in shining armor.” I bit in.

  The game began. Apparently, since it was Yankee Stadium, this meant that the other team—the Boston Red Sox—went to bat first. And this meant that Pete Schlump was on the pitcher’s mound.

  He got on the mound to a smattering of applause mixed with a rumble of boos. But silence hung thick over the stadium as he wound up his first pitch. The ball bulleted toward the batter, a huge, lanky man who Berta had claimed was “Dy-no-mite.” Which sounded good … but Mr. Dynamite swung and missed.

  “Strike!” the umpire yelled.

  The crowd roared.

  Pete had the ball in his hand again, and he twiddled it around as though getting the perfect grip. Mr. Dynamite waited, knees bent, neck taut. Pete threw; Mr. Dynamite swung wildly.

  “Strike!”

  The crowd erupted. Men nearby started chanting “Schlump’s back! Schlump’s back!”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Ralph said.

  I was more interested in my hot dog than the game—where had they gotten that divine pickle relish?—but Thomas Edison would’ve classified the air in the stadium as electric.

  Pete pitched again, and Mr. Dynamite struck out. Then another batter was up, and he struck out, too, and so did the third batter. The crowd was in ecstasy. Grace screamed, “I love you, Petey!”

  The teams shuffled around for the second half of the inning. Pete had his back thoroughly slapped by his teammates. Newspaper photographers jockeyed for shots. I bit into my second hot dog. A little pickle relish dripped onto my lap. Sigh.

  The baseball game went on and it wasn’t especially exciting, because every time Pete was on the pitcher’s mound, not a single batter could hit the ball. The crowd was in deafening ecstasies.

  Berta crowed insults and directed raspberries at the umpire, who, despite calling strike after strike for Pete, was also occasionally obliged to call a strike for a Yankees batter. “The man is a monster,” she huffed.

  At last there was a break in the game, which Berta referred to as the seventh-inning stretch. Grace hung over the railing, yelling for Pete, who was waving to the crowd and posing for cameras. Berta and I joined her. Ralph stayed back. He liked to keep a low profile.

  “Grace, honey!” Pete called, coming over. “About that question I wanted to ask you!”

  “Yes, Petey?” Grace said breathlessly.

  “Wait.” I stopped Grace with a hand on her arm. I leaned over the railing and spoke in a stage whisper so the newspaper reporters over by the dugout wouldn’t hear. “Mr. Schlump, I have a few questions for you regarding the deaths of Muffy and Winfield Morris.”

  “Waste of time,” Berta murmured.

  “Questions?” Pete took off his baseball cap and scratched his head. “Kinda funny time to be asking, dontcha think?”

  “You’ve been unavailable,” I said.

  “Of course, Mr. Schlump,” Berta said, “we know you are terribly busy and we do not wish to impose—”

  “We do wish to impose.” I jabbed Berta with my elbow. “Now, tell me. Why were you at Coney Island yesterday when Senator Morris was shot?”

  “Watchin’ this sweet little doll here compete,” Pete said, smiling at Grace.

  “Do you own a gun?” I asked.

  “The only shooting I do is with this puppy,” Pete said, flexing his right arm.

  Grace giggled, and so did Berta.

  Gee whiz. “And what about the night Muffy Morris died at Willow Acres?” I asked. “Do you have an alibi?” The newspaper reporters were heading over. I hoped Pete wouldn’t notice.

  “Oh, I’ve got an alibi, all right,” Pete said with a suggestive grin.

  “Petey,” Grace whispered.

  “I was with Grace,” Pete said. “All night. We couldn’t have killed Muffy, because we were too busy.”

  The newspaper reporters clustered around Pete, snapping photographs and scribbling in notebooks. No way was any of this going to be kept secret.

  I turned to Grace, who was blushing but also preening a little for the cameras. “Grace,” I said, “I, um, happened to look into your room that night a
nd I saw you sleeping. Alone.”

  “I wasn’t asleep. I knew you were coming for my diary. Pretty obvious after you tried to nick it off my nightstand that afternoon—and so after you rattled my doorknob and found it locked, I pretended to be asleep while Petey hid under the bed. I heard you sort of grunting, Mrs. Woodby, as you climbed along the ivy outside my window and peeked in.”

  I heard Ralph chuckling behind me and I chose to ignore it. Anyway, I didn’t recall any grunts on my part. But I did recall the way Grace’s head had tossed from side to side on her pillow and how she’d muttered incoherently. She hadn’t been dreaming; she’d been pretending to dream.

  “I’ve got a question!” Pete shouted. “Will you marry me, Grace Whiddle?”

  “Yes!” Grace screamed. The stadium erupted in hoots and cheers. “Catch me, Petey!” Grace swung her legs over the railing and jumped.

  Pete spread his arms, but honestly, Grace probably outclassed him in the weight department. She flattened him on the turf.

  The crowd roared. Pete and Grace kissed. The photographers crouched and tippy-toed, angling for shots.

  “I think we need one-way tickets to Timbuktu,” I said to Berta over the din of the crowd, “for when Sophronia Whiddle learns about this turn of events. My gut tells me that Grace and Pete are telling the truth about being together that night at Willow Acres, so that eliminates them as suspects.” Grace and Pete were the first suspects to be eliminated, actually. I felt that I deserved something made out of chocolate.

  “I told you Pete could not have killed anyone, Mrs. Woodby,” Berta said. “Oh, look at the time. Three o’clock at last. It is time to ring up the feed store.”

  * * *

  We found a pay telephone booth just outside the stadium. Berta fed it a nickel and rang up the Hare’s Hollow feed store. At length she had Harriet Klipper on the line. I crammed inside the telephone booth, too, and got my ear as close to the earpiece as I could. Ralph was left outside with Cedric. How he managed to look suave while holding the leash of a teddy bear–sized dog is anyone’s guess.

  Berta said, “Miss Klipper, I am searching for Beaulah Starr and I understand you are her dear friend. Do you know where I might find her?”