by P. N. Elrod
“Not a girl,” said the perceptive banker. This time they didn’t check the photo.
I’d tiptoed over to watch, ready to duck, but none of them paid me further notice. I was shaking, fuming, and scared as I tore down the hall yelling for the stage manager and anyone else handy.
A couple bouncers appeared, offering friendly leers, since I was wearing just a slip, but they shot past to earn their keep when shrieks started up in the chorus girls’ dressing room.
The strange invaders had a bad time of it because I didn’t stop raising the roof until they were outnumbered by club employees three to one. Half measures are silly in some situations.
The backstage area was quickly packed with struggling bodies, punches were thrown and caught, clothes ripped. The confined area heard thumpings, glass breaking, men cursing, and girls squealing for what seemed like an hour, but was probably less than a minute. The bouncers knew their business and appeared to be enjoying the exercise. The four men made a good effort to defend themselves, though they moved like players who had overrehearsed and lost their spark.
But if you’re going to have a fight, this was the best kind: brief, brutal, and with the home team victorious.
The men got the bum’s rush. The bouncers and a few other guys who had joined the battle carried things to the back alley, and probably would have rolled into the street, but the club manager stopped them.
“No trouble with the law!” he bellowed, which halted the diehards. It was an advantage to any business not to have police cars roaring up and down the block, scaring off customers. The Classic Club, with illegal gambling in the basement, was particularly considerate of the feelings of its patrons.
The manager stormed into the backstage hall, scowling at the chorus girls who had cautiously emerged from their lair. “All right—who started it?”
With five of them in various stages of dress, undress, outrage, and agitation, he should have known better. They all started talking at once.
He should also have counted. Last I looked there were six girls in the line. While he tried to make sense of simultaneous stories, I eased into the dressing room.
It was like mine, drafty and poorly lighted, but with a lot more stuff confined to roughly the same space. A clothing rack took up the wall behind the door, near to collapse with gaudy taffeta, spangles, and feathers. Onstage the outfits were magical; here they were musty with sweat, sagging, sad—and twitching.
I shoved aside still-warm costumes. Katie Burnell, the sixth girl, crouched behind them, tying a scarf around her head. She gaped up at me in sheer terror for a startled second, then wilted with relief. Her exaggerated makeup had been spoiled by flowing tears. Black trails from her too-thick mascara cut through the supposedly waterproof pancake and greasepaint. She was a mess, a scared-out-of-her-mind mess.
“Those guys are gone, but the boss is hopping mad,” I said. “Stay here a minute.”
She gulped and nodded.
I returned to the hall. The manager—who really wasn’t a bad sort, just upset—had worked out that none of the girls knew any of the guys.
“So they wasn’t nobody’s boyfriends?” he asked, his eyes sharp for the least hint of a lie. Male visitors were not allowed in this part of the club, only stage talent and other employees.
“Oh, please,” said Big Maggie, who wasn’t big, except for her loud, fluting voice. “I can do better than those mugs. Ask me if I can do better.”
He declined the invitation. “You girls never seen ’em before?”
“They weren’t in the audience,” I said from the back. “They were dressed too strange.” On weekends the Classic Club was a high-hat joint. Patrons had to put on the Ritz or find some other place for drinks and a show come Saturday night.
The other girls supported my observation, nodding, agreeing, and comparing notes now that the excitement had died down.
The manager turned toward the bouncers and guys who’d found an excuse to continue loitering at their end of the hall. You’d think they’d be used to seeing half-dressed females, but apparently not. The ventriloquist and even his dummy had come out for a gander.
The manager gave someone hell about the back door being unlocked, but it was like holding back winter: people were always leaving it open after sneaking outside for a smoke.
I kept my lips together about the men looking for a blonde like me. Katie Burnell had dark hair, but it was a recent and poorly done bottle job. No woman goes from traffic-stopping platinum to a mousy shade of brunette without a good reason.
“Break this up and get back to work,” said the manager. “No need to call the law if no one’s hurt.”
“I broke a nail,” Big Maggie informed him, showing her left ring finger, the rest of her digits in a loose fist. She was too much a lady to use her middle finger, which made the gesture all the more amusing to everyone but the boss.
He grumbled about smart alecks as the girls went back to their room. His gaze fell on me as the guys whistled and hooted appreciation. I straightened, having bent over to pick up some trash. The only thing covering my behind was the pale satin slip. They’d focused on that, not on what I’d snagged from the floor and held behind my back.
“You know anything about those mugs, Bobbi?”
“Nope,” I answered truthfully. “They broke in on me, looked like trouble, so I thought I better yell.”
“You thought right.” He turned to make waving motions to my admirers. “Awright, you cake eaters, show’s over. Walk around the building. Make sure those crashers don’t come back. Discourage ’em if they do, but don’t get caught.”
Though the men were worse for wear with blackening eyes and cut lips, they brightened at the possibility of another donnybrook.
“Has this happened before?” I asked as the troops moved off.
He shook his head.
“Maybe at another club?”
That got me a suspicious squint. “What do you know?”
“Nothing, it just seemed a good bet.”
He snorted. “Next time play the horses.”
“What happened at the other place?”
“Same as here. Four bums bust into the dressing rooms, only they left before they could be thrown out. My brother runs the Golden Rose and called about it. I better phone him back. This is an epidemic.”
“What about the other clubs in town?”
“This is Waterview, not Cheboygan. The only entertainment is this place, the other place, a movie house, and a skating rink. Oh, yeah, the barbershop got in a Whiffle Board. If it wasn’t for that colony of swells from Mackinac Island supportin’ our slot machines, we’d be kissing cousins with a Hooverville.”
“Bet it boomed during Prohibition.”
“Nah, the rumrunners from Canada went to the next town over. Faster boats. You sure you don’t know nothing?”
“I wish I didn’t know this much.”
“You an’ me both, sister.” He moved off, scowl intact. I checked on the girls. Their door leaned crazily on one hinge. Big Maggie stood guard while the rest finished changing. Everyone talked a mile a minute, but subsided when they noticed me.
“What’s goin’ on?” Maggie asked, buttoning her dress.
“Boss thinks it was drunks after a free show. They tried the same thing at another club.”
“Huh. Creeps.”
“Men,” said another girl knowingly.
“Men-creeps,” agreed a third.
“Damn,” said a fourth, reacting to a run in the stocking she’d been pulling on.
“Where’s Katie?” I asked, my heart sinking. Enough costumes had been shifted from the rack to show she was no longer there.
“Washroom.”
I crossed to it, knocked, and called before pushing in. The window was wide, the room empty. The alley outside was also empty. Katie had made a clean escape.
Well, I’d intended to offer help.
I looked at the item I’d plucked from the floor. It was the photo the bank
er type had carried. Though crinkled with abuse, the image was clear, showing a much younger Katie Burnell. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen at the time.
It was a bridal portrait; she was radiant, smiling, and had platinum blond hair.
The cardboard back bore the stamped-on address of a photography studio in Sheldon, Ohio. An elegant copperplate hand had written on the white space under the photo: Mrs. Ethan Duvert on the Day of Her Wedding . The date was under it.
The picture was less than a month old.
Good God, what was she doing to herself? The heavy makeup she always wore made her look years older. She’d also been scared . That could pile on the years.
“Hey, you done in there? I gotta go.” One of the girls slipped by.
I went to my dressing room, donned my traveling suit, and arranged to get my trunk hauled to the train station. It wasn’t a big trunk, not like the one my boyfriend sometimes sleeps in, but I’d checked inside in case Katie had gotten a bright idea. My clothes were there, but no runaway bride. I’d seen too many movies.
Yes … that is correct. My boyfriend sleeps in a trunk. During the day. But only sometimes .
I’ll get back to him shortly.
One of the guys drove me and the trunk to the train station two blocks away. He offered to stay, but the stationmaster and a porter were there, and I had my .38. It made my purse heavy, but I didn’t mind. I was safe enough. Those badly dressed creepy guys weren’t looking for me, after all.
The porter took care of the trunk, the stationmaster took care of my ticket. It was three in the morning in Waterview, Michigan, and I had nothing to do for the next three hours, which was exactly perfect. I parked on one of the long benches and pulled an apple and a movie magazine from my purse. Both gave me something to do while I thought about Katie Burnell and whether there was still some way to find her.
I wanted to know what had her so scared, why those guys were after her, and to help if I could. I could call a cop, but if this was the kind a problem the law could solve, wouldn’t she have already gone to them? Maybe she was at the police station even now.
She was a good dancer, keeping pace with the others, never missing a cue, smiling when required, but quiet. Not that she was snobbish, more like she wanted to be invisible. Some girls were like that, able to perform onstage, but shy the rest of the time.
Katie kept to herself and the hotel room she shared with two of the girls. I’d stayed at the same place and gotten to know everyone. Some headliners don’t mix with the chorus, but not me. They always know the best gossip. Show a little respect and you’ve got friends for life.
Last Friday Katie had turned down going to the matinee showing of a Clark Gable picture with us, even after I said the tickets and popcorn were my treat. The girls and I had a great time, but no one wondered much about Katie. For that I felt a touch of guilt, but how was I to know scary lugs were looking for her?
A tall young man marched purposefully into the station. He was shaved, dressed well, and alert, which was wrong for the hour. Early risers and nighthawks were never so brisk at three in the morning. I decided to ignore him and hope he’d not notice me. Fat chance of that, since I was the only other person there.
He went to the stationmaster’s window, rumbled a question, got a head shake in reply. He repeated things with the porter, and then it was my turn. It would have been silly to continue to ignore him, so I put the magazine aside, but not the apple.
Damned good-looking fellow, I thought as he approached and touched his hat. His features were as lean and sharp as his tailored suit; his beautiful dark eyes were impossible to ignore.
“I’m sorry to bother you, miss, but have you seen this lady?”
He tipped a fresh, uncrinkled copy of Katie’s wedding picture toward me.
I’d taken a big bite of apple and put on my dumbest face, speaking with my mouth full. “Ain’t she that actress?” I asked indistinctly, an apple crumb and juice slipping down my chin. I’d not planned it, but felt proud of the effect, swiping it away with one finger. “That one from the new Clark Gable movie?”
His face tightened with effort to ignore my lack of eating finesse. “No, her name is Katherine Duvert. She’s my sister.”
And I was Minnie Mouse. Katie’s skin was pale as a Swede’s in winter; his was a Mediterranean olive tone. Her eyes were a transparent gray, his were nearly black. Different brows, chins, noses—neither of them had any relatives in common unless it went back to Roman times.
He wore a gold wedding band. I’d noticed it when he held the picture. It glinted, new and shiny, in the dim station lights.
I pegged him as the jilted husband, so why sell himself as her brother?
I hate liars. If Katie wanted to run away from this pretty boy, then she must have a good reason. “No, I ain’t seen her. I’d have remembered another blonde. We stick together, y’know.” I fingered some of the hair not covered by my hat, smiling like a cheap flirt, certain there were apple bits sticking to my gums.
Something flickered behind his eyes. Distaste and disbelief. He’d not bought my act. I couldn’t blame him, having laid it on too thick. If I ever got to Hollywood, I would definitely need an acting coach.
Then something flickered inside me, a twinge of unease that this guy was eerily familiar. I was certain we’d never met. I would have remembered someone so striking. He had not been in the audience back at the Classic Club or he’d have come backstage himself instead of those four guys.
“I was wondering—” he began hesitantly, unsure and apologetic, which was also an act. This was a guy who was supremely confident every day of the week. He must have thought hiding it would make people more willing to help him out.
I don’t like manipulators any more than liars, but smiled encouragingly. “What?”
“Would you mind terribly checking the ladies’ lounge for me? I’d do it but—” He made a small motion with his long fingers to indicate the necessity for female help given the circumstances.
“Yeah, sure, I guess so.”
He stepped back, not crowding me as I stood. By then I’d come up with a reason why he posed as a brother, not husband. People might side with a runaway bride, and not help a deserted groom on the chance that he could be a wife beater, but a worried brother was someone else again.
He stayed put as I went to the door and looked in.
Lounge was a grand overstatement: three stalls, drab paint, drab tile floor, wire-meshed window—one of the half-open stall doors moved ever so slightly. “Sorry, mister, nobody’s home.”
He looked at me a few heartbeats too long for comfort, his face somber. “I see. Thank you.” Then he remembered to smile, and the look in his eyes just then made my tummy flip over in a bad way. He left the station.
I let my breath out fast, feeling shaky. That mug was a hundred times creepier than the four crashers, and I’d figured out why.
He was like my trunk-sleeping boyfriend. Not like him, because Jack is a sweet, wonderful guy and never gives people the creeps unless they truly deserve it.
This one was like my Jack in a way that made my .38 with its ordinary lead bullets useless. I cast around for a reasonable substitute: anything made of wood, preferably with a point. The porter’s broom and dustpan were propped in one corner by a trash can. The broom handle had potential, but why couldn’t he have left a spear or baseball bat lying around?
I dropped my apple in the trash, grabbed the broom, and went into the lounge.
“Katie, it’s Bobbi Smythe from the nightclub. I can help, if you’ll let me.”
A soft sob came from the middle stall. I gave her a moment, then looked in. She stood unsteadily on the toilet seat, doubled over with her head below the divider. She clutched a small suitcase in both hands, which hindered her balance. Now she looked very young indeed.
“He’s gone for the moment.”
“He?” she whispered, shivering head to toe. I’d never seen a face more lost or lacking in hope.
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“I assume you’re trying to avoid a handsome young husband?”
She came down so fast I had to catch her, and then I had to keep her from tearing out in sheer panic.
“Slow down, girl, you’ll run right into him. Let me help you.”
Katie shrank from my touch until stopped by one of the sinks. “You can’t, you don’t know what he can do.”
“Tell me later. First we get you out of here.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Actually, I do, a lot more than you’d think. Trust me a minute, would ya?”
While she thought that over I figured out how to improve my new weapon.
Under the window was a cast-iron radiator, bolted to the floor and tall enough to give me leverage. I forced the brush end of the broom into the narrow space between the radiator and wall, jamming it far enough in so that it wouldn’t twist or slip free. The handle lay at a steep angle on top, resting between two of the accordionlike columns.
It took two good tries, yanking down with all my weight, to break it. I had four feet of pine dowel that might pass as a walking stick if no one looked too close. No point on the end, but more useful than a .38.
Next, I planned to get the window open and sneak us out, but plans change.
Something was coming in that way.
The window was shut, but a nebulous gray shape was impossibly pushing right through the glass and wire mesh like smoke through a screen door. For a second I was fascinated by the sight, but then my heart jumped to my throat. Once it got inside—
Young Katie put a fist to her mouth as she stared, able to see it, too. She froze in place, eyes popping as the grayness thickened and took on definition. A man’s tallish shape began to materialize two feet in front of her, his arms spread wide, ready to grab her.
I scampered behind him, too scared to worry about consequences.
The instant he was fully solid, I swung and slammed the broomstick into the side of his head as hard as I could. The temple bones are thin there, more easily broken if hit with enough force.
The shock of impact twanged painfully up both arms. It was like hitting a metal flagpole. Only this pole had some give to it. Not much, but the wood in my hands made all the difference.
