by L. J. Greene
“Come on,” the Magnolia Girl hissed at me, and pulled me onward.
Alice was waiting for us at the table, and it was only as we reached her that I realized I had no idea about English formalities.
“Uh,” I said eloquently, and gestured towards Alice. “This is…Lady Alice Cresswickham?” Alice, thankfully, smiled. I continued, “And, uh—”
“Bella,” the Magnolia Girl said. “Just Bella. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
She curtsied.
“Oh,” Alice said, and I’d bet my hat that if not for her finishing schools and her English cool, she would have cringed. Instead, she jumped up and took the Magnolia Girl’s hands in her own. “Call me Alice, please. How lovely to make your acquaintance. I was so moved by your performance. Won’t you join us for a drink? Leo is ordering champagne. I always think champagne tastes best with jazz, don’t you?”
I started to think that maybe the Magnolia Girl had been right: maybe girls like her did know what they were up against, and how to handle it, if she could reduce Alice to babbling.
“Gee, thanks, honey. I will,” Bella said, and parked herself in the chair Cresswickham had left vacant. She shook up her mink like a bird settling to roost. “My, it’s cooler out here front of house. Those hot lights on stage make it feel deep summer.” She fluffed a second time.
“What a darling mink that is,” Alice said hurriedly, and we sat as well.
“Why, thank you. A friend gave it to me.”
“She has exquisite taste.”
“Oh, she did, yes. But she’s dead now. I guess you could say I inherited her taste.”
“My goodness. I’m so sorry,” Alice murmured, and lit another cigarette. “Was it recent?” She had a bewildered air about her. How odd Americans are, she seemed to be thinking.
The Magnolia Girl leaned in close, like she was whispering secrets. “Yes, quite recent. It was a terrible shock, her murder.”
Yes. Girls like her really did know what they were up against. She could play Alice alright, with her English aversion to intimacy with strangers. Alice looked away as though the very mention of death was shameful.
“Murder, you say?” I broke in boldly, and lit Alice’s cigarette for her.
“That’s right.”
“You never mentioned it before.”
“You never asked.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been so long,” Leo interrupted, sweeping back to the table and followed by a waiter carrying champagne and a tray of glasses. “I had a devil of a time finding the right vintage. Hullo, there. I’m Leo.” He stood again to lean over and proffer his hand to the Magnolia Girl.
She shook it. “Bella.”
“Gorgeous mink.”
Bella opened her mouth to trot out the dead friend again—why, I hadn’t a clue, but she was determined to do it, and I could tell by the look in her eye. I thwarted her.
“What do you do with your time, Bella, when you’re not holding a crowd spellbound at the Birdhouse?”
She gave me an arch look. “This and that. Mostly I’m searching out my friend’s killer.”
“I say, are you really?” Alice asked. Her natural curiosity had overcome her reserve.
“I sure am.”
“Isn’t that rather dangerous?” Leo asked. “The sort of thing that should be left to the police?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not at all sure the police weren’t involved somewhere along the way,” Bella said, and took the cigarette that Leo offered her. “But it’s hard to tell. See, it was the Incubus did her in.”
Behind him, the waiter was working out the cork of the champagne bottle, and it gave with a sudden pop. We all jumped—all of us but Leo, whose dark eyes were fixed on the Magnolia Girl’s face. He said: “I believe I’ve seen you around Chateau Marmont.”
“’S’pect so. You go there a lot?” She gave him an unsubtle wink and slid her eyes towards me.
“What was her name?” Leo asked. “Your friend.” The waiter began pouring out the drinks.
“Lynette Rochelle. She was a jazz singer. Used to sing that Gloomy Sunday song every Saturday night here, so I took over for her. As a kind of tribute, see?”
“You said your friend caught a sore throat,” I objected. “And that’s why you were here.”
Bella gave me the kind of sympathetic look women give to the runt of the litter. “Well, she did, didn’t she? Caught the sorest throat there is.” Leo gave a cough that sounded like he was covering up for a laugh, but Bella continued over the top of him. “Lynette lived at Chateau Marmont before she was killed. Someone’d set her up cozy, but she never said who in her letters. Played coy about it. Some rich fella looking out for her career, I guess.”
It seemed to me that the three of us listening were immobile, tensed for flight, just waiting to see what she’d say next. The only movement was the plume of smoke that streamed from Leo’s lips across the table. He wasn’t laughing anymore.
Bella kept talking, like nothing would keep her from telling the whole tale. “We sang together when we were younger, only she was real determined to make a go of it. Real determined. She always wore white, liked to think it was her trademark. I got the call when they found her. She had no living relatives, see, or none they could find. She’d left all her clothes to me, and she was paid-up at the Chateau until the end of the year. So what I figured was, even if I can’t find some justice for her, maybe I can haunt her killer at least, and I moved into her bungalow.”
The waiter put the bottle in the ice bucket, gave a quick nod of the head to Leo, and retreated.
“That’s…” I wanted to say foolish, but it seemed cruel.
“Brave,” Alice said, chin in hand and listening intently. “Extremely brave of you.”
Bella fluffed out her mink again in self-satisfaction. “I don’t mind telling you, I was scared at first. Well, who wouldn’t be? But I made some friends at the Examiner, in return for a few stories on Lynette. They’ve been giving me tips, sharing leads, as long as I give tit for tat. So I aim to uncover something. I’d like to bury whoever did it, and that’s a fact, but I’d settle just for knowing.”
“They’re making out this Incubus will strike again,” Leo said. “Aren’t they? The papers, I mean. Don’t you worry he might come after you?”
“Worry?” Bella gave a bright, vicious smile. “Oh, I’m banking on it. I want my shot at him. I can handle lady-killers alright. S’why I colored my hair, see? I’m not a natural blonde,” she said, as though any of us had thought she were. “But the way the papers tell it, he’s on the look out for blondes, this Incubus. Prefers ’em. Guess he must be a gentleman.” She laughed at her own joke. None of us joined her. Bella gave Alice a glance from beneath her eyelashes. “Say, Goldilocks, maybe it’s you should be worried. I’ll bet you’re just surrounded by gentlemen.”
Alice went pale. Leo said coldly: “You’ll forgive me, but I think you should let the whole thing drop. Let the police do their job.”
Bella raised an eyebrow. “You’re not from Los Angeles, mister, or you wouldn’t be saying that. God helps those who help themselves around here. Now as I said, I was scared at first, but I found the cure for that.”
“Which is?” Leo asked.
“Righteous anger,” she told him.
Alice raised up her glass of champagne. “To Lynette,” she said somberly.
“To Lynette,” we chorused, and I drained my glass. Leo filled it again without a glance at me.
“I thought you had another fella with you,” Bella said, setting down her glass. “Thought I saw him from the stage.”
“Where is Reggie?” Alice asked.
“Reggie is indisposed,” Leo said. “He’s taken a taxi home. Bella, can you tell us what Frank Sinatra’s like? You must let us in on some backstage gossip.” With that, he steered the conversation into safer waters, although I could tell that Bella, beautiful and brave and full of rage, was letting him take the lead. She was biding her time like a cat play
s with a mouse, that half-smile on her lips and an edge to her trickling laughter.
Chapter 29
When we’d killed the champagne I went to the bar to get a hard drink. The barman grinned at me like we shared a secret, until I gave him no tip and got the scowl treatment instead. Leo came up behind me and pressed closer than he ought to’ve done in public.
“You never said you were making such great friendships around the Chateau,” he murmured, and nodded his head at the barman for a second bourbon-on-the-rocks.
I drained mine while we stood there.
“What happened to him?” I asked. Leo shifted his brow to signify confusion. But before he could insult my intelligence, I said, “You promised you’d quit the lying. Remember?”
“He went home,” he said with a shrug, and paid the barman a 100% tip on his drink. He poked at the ice in it like he was fishing for something underneath.
“Why?”
“He said he was ill.”
I shifted to face him front-on and leaned against the bar. “I don’t know,” I said, “why I ever waste my breath asking you these things. You just clam up tight and give me looks like I’m crazy for wanting to know something. God knows if there’s really something going on or if you’re just acting like there is.”
“You didn’t tell me about Bella,” he said quietly, and he looked square at me then. “She’s going to get herself into trouble she can’t get out of, and she might just muddy the waters for us, too, Rabbit. If you care for her, and you want us to get out of this mess with Reggie, I suggest you tell her to stop this nonsense, pack up and go home.”
I looked over his shoulder. “Tell her yourself,” I said, and finished my drink. He jerked his head around to see her standing there, mink arranged to show off one bare shoulder.
“Please do,” she said. “I’m all ears.”
Mancini got two burning marks high up on his cheekbones, but he held his ground. “It’s foolish. You’ve buried your friend. Why not save your mama a broken heart and get out of the city before the same happens to you?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Well, well. The gloves come off.”
“I’ll say. Was that a threat, Mr. Mancini?” Bella asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snorted. “It’s advice, is all. Solid advice you should take. Any man would tell you the same.”
“I wonder if they would. I wonder. Your lady friend, on the other hand, is wondering if we’re getting another bottle of champagne,” she said.
“We are not,” Leo told her. “We’re going home. It was a pleasure to meet you; excuse me.” He stalked off to the table, and leaned over to speak to Alice. She looked put out.
He’d left his bourbon on the bar, so I drank it for him, and then gave a wet grin at my Magnolia Girl. “I’ll say this for you: you weren’t kidding around, what you said before. You can handle yourself alright.”
She scrutinized me head to toe and gave a sigh. “Pity you can’t do the same. Do you always gotta be drunk like that?”
“Do I always gotta be?” I laughed, and she glared. “Why, no, but I prefer to be. Helps soothe the mind and allay fears. We can’t all find that righteous anger you talked about.”
“I’ll tell you this much, buster, you better find it before long. That daddy of yours ain’t fooling anyone. He’s guilty of something, and that’s the truth.”
“For Christ’s sake,” I said. “I’m sorry about your friend, really I am, but Leo’s not the one who killed her.”
“Of course not,” she scoffed. “I know that. He’s queer as a three-dollar bill. Whoever killed Lynette was nice and intimate with her ’fore he did it, or at least that’s what my sources told me. But he knows something about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that fella you had with you, the one who ran out. Why would he go otherwise?”
Alice and Leo’s polite discussion about leaving was getting noisy. She was refusing to move, and he was imploring her with increasing heat.
I told Bella, “He’s not your man either, the one who was with us before. Lord Reginald Cresswickham is queer too. And not only that, he’s impotent.” It felt good to say it out loud, to roll that word around on my tongue and lick my lips to savor the taste. It was the only power I really had over him. She stared at me, so I added, “He can’t get it up. No juice.”
“I know what impotent means,” she said icily. “I just don’t know if I believe you.”
“Oh, well. That’s up to you. Excuse me, won’t you?” I brushed past her. Leo’s face was thunderous and he had a hand wrapped around Alice’s clutch bag like it was a substitute for her throat. “Cut it out,” I hissed. “People are staring. You’re making a scene.”
He let the bag go at once, and she snatched it up. “I’m not going,” she said calmly. “We came to see Sinatra after all, and besides, I want to talk more with Bella. I’ll take a taxi home after the show.”
Leo said in a low, angry tone, “Reggie would never forgive me, leaving you at a jazz bar in the middle of the night, not to mention Betts. He’d flay me alive!”
“It’s only just gone eleven,” she said. “And I am a grown woman.”
“It’s a moot point,” I said. “Bella’s scarpered.”
She had, too, when none of us were looking. My Magnolia Girl had slipped away on the Q.T., back to the Chateau I presumed, to her dead friend’s clothes and her dead friend’s bed. No wonder she’d seemed so strange when I first met her: terrified, not knowing who to trust. I wondered that she’d come to trust me. But then, she hadn’t, not really; only accepted a drink and sat with me for five minutes by the pool.
I felt sorry for her, but in a washed-out kind of way, like I was standing behind a waterfall, removed from her pain and her sorrow. I didn’t have to feel it the way she felt it, and I had enough troubles of my own.
The evening was done for after that, with the mood soured. Alice left without any further protest. No one said much on the drive back, and when a Sinatra song came on the radio, Leo turned it off with a twist so ferocious I thought the knob would come away in his fingers. He seemed more serene by the time we reached the mansion gates, and he parked without concern right at the front door. “Betts’ll put it away later,” he said at my raised eyebrows. “It could do with a wash, anyway. Get all that street muck off."
When we stepped into the foyer, Alice would have swept up to bed without a word if Leo hadn’t caught her hand at the bottom of the staircase. “Alice, darling, forgive me. Please. I can’t go to bed with you angry at me, I won’t sleep a wink. I was only worried that troublemaker singer had upset you and so you see…” He spread his hands in a silent plea.
She softened. “You’re forgiven. I was rather pig-headed myself.”
“There, now,” I yawned. “We’ve all kissed and made up. Can we get to bed? I’m asleep on my feet. All that murder talk wore me out.”
“Enjoyed yourself?” Cresswickham’s voice floated down to us from his position on the landing. He was leaning over the railing in a precarious manner, like an inebriated Juliet waiting for her Romeo. Even from below I could see he was sauced.
Leo glanced up at him. “I’ll come and see you to bed, Reggie,” he said. “Wait there.”
“I’ll do as I bloody well please,” he slurred, and dragged himself to the head of the stairs. He staggered sideways.
Alice gave a gasp, and raised her hand to her mouth. Leo and I both darted to the foot of the stairs, but Cresswickham had caught the rail and fallen heavily to his knees. He started to laugh, a rough, choking noise, close to a sob. Leo walked slowly up the stairs and then knelt down by him.
“Come on, old boy,” he said softly. “You’ve had a difficult night. Let me help you, my best beloved.” He got the Englishman up and limping off the landing, headed towards his bedroom.
I only became aware of how hard my fists were clenched when Alice tried to take my hand. I relaxed my fingers and let her wriggle her hand into mine. Leo happened to glance down at that moment.
He stopped dead, and it made Cresswickham look blearily around, before giving a hungry stare at my fingers joined with Alice’s.
“I don’t think I can make it to my bedroom,” the Englishman said.
At once, Leo said, “I’m helping you, Reggie. Won’t take but a minute and you’ll be safe in bed.”
Alice’s hand tightened so hard on mine that I winced.
“No, I don’t think so,” Cresswickham said. “Alice’s room is closer. Take me there. I’m hurt. My war injury playing up. I’ve never been the same since the war. Take me to Alice’s room. She can see to me.”
“I’ll come to your quarters,” she called up shrilly. “I’ll come and see to you there, darling.”
“It would be so much easier to take you back to your own room,” Leo agreed. “If you stop in Alice’s room, it’ll just make the journey longer.”
Cresswickham pushed him away and staggered back towards the stairs. “Do you all want me to live in pain? Is it so much to ask for such a little kindness, after everything I do for all of you?”
Alice pulled her hand out of mine and snapped her clutch bag open and shut a few times. “Alright,” she said at last.
He gave me a nasty smile. “You’d better come too, Coleridge. Have a nightcap.”
“Cole should go to bed,” Leo contradicted. “He’s dead on his feet. Besides, we can’t all of us crowd into Alice’s bedroom.”
“Oh, I think we’ll fit quite cozily,” Cresswickham said. “And he doesn’t look dead to me, on the contrary. Bring up a bottle of something for us, Cole.”
Alice had gone white. “You’d better do as he says,” she murmured, and set off up the stairs. I wondered for a moment where Betts was, what he’d make of all this; but of course, I remembered, he had the night off. He had the whole night off and had already told me his intention of staying out late as he could. Don’t often get time out from the madhouse, he’d said. Got to make the most of it.
