Final Curtain: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) (19 page)

***

Late that afternoon, sitting by my window reflecting on that encounter with Tobias and Clorinda, I looked down into the street as Nadine strolled by. I thought of Tobias’ offer of money, refused by her. She was with two stage crew members, and they were laughing at something. I watched her closely: so pretty, so fresh-looking, lighthearted, and yet I sensed she was part of something awful here, though perhaps not of her own doing. A young woman whose little-girl demeanor disguised some inner resolve. After all, she stood up to Tobias and his wealth. And, curiously, she’d journeyed to Maplewood with a purpose in mind. I assumed it was Dak. Or was it something else?

The three young women were enjoying themselves.

A car slid to a stop ahead of them, stopped sideways on the street, blocking them. Horrified, I watched Annika jump out of the driver’s seat, the car left running and the door wide open. She rushed toward the startled young women and shouted something at Nadine. Her words drifted up through my open window. “You think I don’t know what happened? What you are doing?”

Nadine and the others didn’t move.

In a blind rage, Annika’s hand flew out, slapping Nadine in the face. So raw a moment, so unexpected, that one of the other women screamed. The other, clutching a bottle of Coke, let it slip from her hand onto the pavement. Nadine stood there, silent now, her body bent at the waist, her hand rubbing her cheek.

Annika stepped back, head bobbing, and she began sputtering, “Oh, my God. I didn’t mean that. Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I’m…sorry…I…” She looked around, wildly flicking her head, and she rushed back to her car, jumping in and slamming the door. She sped up the street, driving on the wrong side of the line. For some reason she was leaning on her horn.

***

Ilona House joined me as I sat in the Full Moon Café. She didn’t wait to be invited to sit, but pulled up a chair, placed her elbows on the table. “So Tobias and Clorinda have shunned you.” Her own words delighted her because she laughed loudly, so hard she started to choke. “Shunned from God’s glorious kingdom.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

“Oh, but it is. From my point of view, Edna dear.”

I sipped iced tea with mint. “Frankly, they did stun me.” I managed a smile. “The infidel sort. Here I defined Tobias as a gentle, gnome-like little man, a little elf with deep pockets and a deeper love of God. A little maddened, yes. And Clorinda, fawning over me and giving that fiery Calvinist sermon that somehow still guaranteed salvation.”

Ilona scoffed. “None of it’s true—or partly true. I don’t know. But Clorinda has taken on Tobias’ weird coloration—she’s appropriated that fire-and-brimstone belief, old New England, Puritan, predestination, stockades on the town green, the dunking of witches. Clorinda used to be the angel of forgiveness, all soft and fluffy. Under Tobias’ tutelage she became the fiery sword of damnation.”

“Harsh words, no?”

Her eyes pierced mine, riveted. “Didn’t you see it firsthand today when they commanded your presence at their lair?”

“You heard?”

“I’m an eavesdropper, dear.”

“Yes, I saw a different Tobias and Clorinda. But I don’t understand—they’ve abandoned fear of Dak’s being arrested. They’re more afraid of Dak fleeing back into Nadine’s obviously waiting arms.”

“The problem with Dakota is that he’s always been—malleable. A boy who’s easy to like, but just as easy to hate.”

I broke in. “You hate him.”

“Speaking of using harsh words, well, I used to love him. That little boy I had
thrust
upon me by a father very similar to Tobias. An authoritative, vindictive man. I showered Dakota with love, I fairly smothered him, but he was foolishly indulged by a long-distance mother. And when Clorinda returned to take him back, she poisoned him against me. ‘Aunt Ilona doesn’t love you like I do, my sweetie.’ I admit I turned nasty”—a smug smile—“because I’m not a nice person. That stays with a child. I didn’t know how to be a mother. And, I suppose, I resented it thrust on me. But neither did Clorinda.” She scoffed. “She
still
doesn’t know how to be a mother.”

“So what does Dak think of you now?”

“I don’t think he likes me. I know he doesn’t.”

“Because of Clorinda?”

A long pause as she seemed to be fashioning an answer. Finally, with that same sly smile, she said, “Because I didn’t
save
him
from
his mother.”

“How sad!”

“Is it really? I don’t really care.”

“Clorinda and Tobias have tucked all their own dreams into Dak. That never works.”

“And look where it’s got them. Lord, Clorinda handpicked Annika from the fawning, dizzy worshippers, groomed her into a less attractive replica of herself. A soulless girl who does nothing but talk of her soul.”

I mentioned the incident I witnessed that afternoon—Annika slapping Nadine on the sidewalk, followed by her stuttered apology. Ilona shook her head back and forth, amused. “I’d love to have seen that. Annika seldom slips out of the angelic mold fashioned for her.”

“It wasn’t pretty.” A pause. “Annika sometimes strikes me as a taut wire ready to snap.”

Ilona ignored that. “You know, of course, Clorinda is always afraid of Tobias.”

“What?”

Ilona’s eyes sparkled. “Think about it. Clorinda is carrying the weight of Tobias’ impossible dreams. At first it was all right, both hallelujahing their spiritual chorus. Then, as the church became better known—as Clorinda became celebrated for her messianic oratory, her flamboyant flare—well, Tobias demanded more and more from her. I mean, she’s invited to do revivals from upstate New York to Tampa, Florida. That’s
one
year only. Sometimes I see her alone, tears welling in her eyes, and I wonder about the pressure. The…the loneliness. Those diamond earrings start to weigh too much, my dear. The price of a flawless stone can be deadly. Clorinda is like Tantalus pushing her three-carat diamonds up a hill. Somehow she never reaches that City on the Hill. Will she fall apart like Aimee Semple McPherson—fake her own drowning off the Jersey shore? Take an obvious lover and be headlined in the tabloids? Be caught trysting in a bungalow on Boyden Avenue?”

“Let me ask you a question, Ilona. You don’t care for Clorinda or Tobias. Or Annika. Possibly even Dak. Anyone, truly. Clearly. You don’t buy into Clorinda’s spiritual message. And yet you stay in that mansion—you serve them, you do the errands in the Village, you’re…”

She ran her tongue over her red lips and absently fingered the butterfly brooch on her collar. Her voice got brittle. “I’m an unmarried woman. No money. No desire for work. My only enjoyment is the denigration of the people I live with. An old maid, the most pathetic woman of our pathetic culture. No? You and me, Edna, two fiftyish spinsters.”

That rankled. “But there is a difference, Ilona.”

“Which is?”

“I pay my own way through life.”

A dark laugh. “And you think that I don’t pay for what I have to endure. I pay, all right.” She bit her lips, which trembled. “Oh, how I pay!”

“Do you think that Dak killed Evan?”

“I don’t care. I met Evan once or twice. He deserved to die.”

“Rather harsh.”

“Most people I’ve met deserve to die.” A thin smile. “You’re not one of them. At least not yet.” She leaned in. “Let me tell you a secret, Edna. Dak confessed to spotting Evan driving around, even pulling up behind his car in that park. He made it a
point
to follow him. Everybody knows that, even Biggers. But I was in town that afternoon and saw Dakota idling at the municipal building, just waiting. A half-hour later, done with my errands, I saw him still there. Waiting until Evan passed by, toot-tooting on that shiny horn. He waited a bit and then pulled behind, following him. He didn’t accidentally spot him and stupidly follow, as he told everyone. He
stalked
him.”

“Oh, dear! Then…”

“‘Oh, dear’ is right, my lovely Edna. Dakota may have confessed but not to everything he did that day.”

“Did you tell Constable Biggers?”

“Of course not. I like to see people get away with murder.”

“You don’t really think Dakota…”

She grinned. “As I said, I don’t really care.”

I shifted the subject. “Clorinda was shocked to see Frank Resnick in town. Our stage manager. She didn’t know, I guess…”

“Yes, I heard all about it. The price you pay for praying all day—things are happening around you, and you don’t notice. The world outside your door. Perhaps if she’d bought a ticket to a show…”

“She knows Frank?”

“
Knew
Frank. Ages ago. In a fantasy land called Hollywood. What I know is that he was in love with her—this, mind you, is
her
version. A boy with mooncalf love-struck eyes, a minor Hollywood player when
she
dreamed of being the next Theda Bara or Pola Negri. Nazimova.”

“Well, he can’t still be in love with her.”

“Of course not. Clorinda wears out fast. A bright and colorful balloon, soon pricked by a necessary pin. Not to Tobias who’s terminally smitten, but then he’s a fool. But Frank disappeared about the time my beloved sister chose to marry another man.”

“But he’s here in Maplewood.”

She winced. “Yeah, that’s troubling. Maybe a coincidence, but most likely not. Of course, I was surprised to see him in the Village—I met him years ago. Briefly. But Clorinda was really surprised. No one told her. Not me, obviously. Dakota told Clorinda he got a job at the theater, but he neglected that other piece of dangerous information. But why should it matter? Their fling was a second in time. Long ago. Far away from here. Over.”

“But he wanted to come to Maplewood.”

“Maybe he’s up to no good.”

“You have proof?”

“I don’t need proof. I never have proof for any of my biases or opinions. Facts get in the way of irrational dislike.”

I mused. “Mother and son both had brief moments in Hollywood. Turbulent, riotous, crazy. And then…nothing.”

“Or maybe something.”

“You know, Ilona, the more I think about it the more I believe the seeds of this murder—or murders, Gus included—can be traced to Dakota’s days in Hollywood. It’s the only answer. Nadine, Evan, Gus—Dak. A whirlpool of emotion and event. Perhaps that sojourn there led to—to murder here.”

Ilona eyed me a long time. Then, cryptically, she smiled. “Maybe. Maybe not. But it seems to me that the seeds to the present are found in the world of a different Hollywood.”

Chapter Sixteen

The world of a different Hollywood
.

Ilona’s words haunted me all night long.

Something was being told to me, though off-handedly, perhaps unintentionally. Yet it lay there, percolating, in the back of my mind.

When I left my rooms for breakfast, I spotted cardboard boxes stacked outside what was Evan’s room. The meager remnants of a short and questionable life.

George, I knew, was already downstairs in the breakfast room. He’d rat-a-tat-tatted on my door as he passed earlier, yelling out “reveille” or some such inanity as he sauntered by, a little too spirited for the hour of the day. Of course, when we collaborated on a play, George told folks I worked from nine in the morning till ten past three in the afternoon, and he from three to nine that night, which left, he insisted, ten feeble minutes for actual writing together. Some folks believed him. But
The Royal Family
was written noon to midnight, for months. Some days we did nothing but argue while George jiggled curtain cords and flipped pencils into the air. He tied and retied his shoes. I sat at the typewriter pecking away with my three fingers while he paced the room.

But now I lingered by the overstuffed boxes, though I knew their contents. I flipped open a flap. Garret Smith, probably under the direction of Constable Biggers, had jammed in the magazine clippings, the new clothing, the toiletries. The one that held my attention was that of the magazines and clippings, of course, and I scrunched down, leafing through them. The clippings: they told me something, surely. You clip an item from a magazine for a reason. Yes, magazines fascinate, especially those from decades-old Hollywood and Broadway past, but clippings suggest selection, decision, purpose. But what?

Evan’s clippings dealt with tawdry or bizarre scandal: unsolved murders, feckless suicides, drug overdoses, sexual peccadilloes, promiscuous flappers in the Roaring Twenties, untoward remarks blurted out when drunk, insane Prohibition binges with unadulterated grain alcohol hootch or spiked needle beer—all the claptrap fodder of gossip columnists. A ticker-tape blip of printed innuendo. Olive Thomas. Fatty Arbuckle. Thomas Ince’s death on Hearst’s yacht. The murder of Desmond Taylor. Sex-themed movies, banned. Attacks by the Catholic Church. It was all there, random and strange—yet, I felt, telling me something.

Hurriedly, I crammed the papers back into the box, resealed the flap. A resident, passing by to the landing, watched me closely. An old man in a powder-blue linen suit with a gold-tipped cane, a droopy walrus moustache on a ruddy face. He paused, contemplated my kneeling there, and commented, “The murdered boy? This is what’s left of him.” A melodramatic valedictory as he sauntered by, tapping his cane as he walked.

Hollywood! I thought. The answer to everything lay buried in the short, fitful lives these folks lived in the land of movie-lot palm trees, endless sun, and make believe. Hollywood!

The four young folks met out there: Dak, Evan, Gus, Nadine. Friends for a short time, though with differing personalities, at odds with one another, transitory friendships, followed by betrayal and dislike. Evan seducing Nadine, Dak’s momentary wife. Why? And Gus, the young Nazi strolling the wide boulevards. Or was he a Nazi then? Hitler Youth—perhaps the creation of not-so-secret political cells on the East Coast, the impressionable boy seduced by bombastic rhetoric and German schnitzel in a Yorkville eatery? Who knew? And Nadine, the slight yet pretty ingénue, still in love with Dak—and he with her? All of the nonsense of those bright-lit Hollywood days transported now into serene Maplewood.

But—

The world of a different Hollywood
.

A different Hollywood. Frank and Clorinda—and, I supposed, silent movies and Aimee Semple McPherson. Cecil B. DeMille. Theda Bara. Mary Pickford. Valentino. Other failed movie careers. All the sad boys and girls hopping buses to oblivion under incredible sunshine. A sad marriage for Clorinda. A dead husband. A skittish little boy sent back East from the Coast, and into Ilona’s confused care.

Ilona’s albatross: the world of a different Hollywood.

***

After the rehearsal, I hurried to leave, but a voice stopped me. “Miss Ferber, wait.” Dak, climbing down from an overhead catwalk and jumping the last few steps, waved at me.

“Dak.” I smiled at him. “You’re here.”

“Surprise.” He was beaming.

“I thought…”

“I heard about the mandatory visitation to the family mansion.” Though he smiled wistfully, his voice was weary, ragged. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It wasn’t your idea, Dak.”

He sighed. “Yet I seem to be the source of all sorts of misery this summer.”

I waved my hand around me. “But you’re
here
.”

He saluted. “Against orders.”

“Tell me.”

I walked toward the front of the theater, Dak leaning into my side, brushing against me as we moved.

“My mother and Tobias summarized the royal audience to me, expecting me to nod and thank them. Putting Miss Ferber in her place.” He grinned.

“Lesser folks have tried to put me in my place—without success.”

He laughed out loud. “I can imagine. You’re a wonder, Miss Ferber.”

“Doubtless one of seven in the world.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised!” A heartbeat. “But seriously, that conversation about you butting into my life made something…well, click in my head. I sat there, stupefied, and it was like I was slapped awake Like I’d been in a stupor, a coma, for years. You, Miss Ferber, you are responsible—and I don’t mean to embarrass you. Something about your candor—your
faith
. A real faith.”

“It’s called nosiness in some quarters, my boy.”

“So be it.” He reached out and touched my sleeve, a gesture I would have found questionable in most circumstances but, done by the soft-spoken young man, it came off as pure affection. I was touched.

I stopped walking. “What happened?”

“I told them
this
job is important to me. Tobias sputtered and had to sit down. My mother screamed about me giving him a stroke. She clutched her heart. She kept fingering her diamond earrings like they would be taken away by a genie. I also told them I had some important thinking to do—about the Assembly of God, about…”

“About Nadine?”

A slight frown. “I suppose. Yes, to be truthful. And, of course, about Annika.”

“Ah, yes, Annika, the evangelical debutante.”

“That’s not nice, Miss Ferber.”

“It wasn’t meant to be nice.”

“Annika is not a bad person. She’s too bendable. My mother can charm birds out of trees—and Annika, coming from a faithless childhood, unloved, was a vacuum ready to be filled.”

“Nevertheless, she holds on to you as though you’re feeble.”

“I
was
feeble…of sorts.”

I grinned. “So that’s over?”

“Well, let me say the process has begun. By the way, Annika told me about her confrontation with Nadine in the street. I mean, she was horrified by her own behavior—the public scene. That’s not like her. She said she just lost control, she who prides herself on discipline and structure. She harbors this…this
fear
of Nadine—now that she knows Nadine and I once were married.”

“It was a violent, unnerving scene.”

“She’s penitent.”

“I think she needs to apologize to poor Nadine.”

Dak looked over his shoulder. “I talked to Nadine this morning. She’s all right with it.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Annika made me promise not to tell Mother. Or, especially, Tobias.”

“Will she be excommunicated?”

He
tsk
ed but said, “She’s afraid of Tobias.”

“Such a small, jittery man. He seems to wreak such fear in so many hearts. Even your mother.”

Dak echoed my words. “Even my mother.”

I pointed to a row of seats at the rear of the theater. “Dak, let’s sit a moment.”

“I only got a moment.”

I sat down and he followed, though he kept looking back toward the stage.

“Do you love your mother?” I asked suddenly.

The question stunned him. “Of course.” Too glib, I thought, but he pulled back. “Sometimes I think I don’t. Sometimes I think she has no room in her life except for God and Tobias. I feel I don’t
know
her.”

“How sad!”

“Well, it’s just the way it is.”

“And Ilona?”

“You know, I
want
to love her, but she pushes me—everyone—away.”

I laughed. “She’s an angry woman.”

He looked me in the eye. “Well, wouldn’t you be? She’s been in bondage all her life. A chance of love ruined by a battlefield in France. A servant to a puritanical father—I remember him as a humorless man, paddling me, slapping me, lecturing me on my bad behavior. He never said a warm or nice word to me, and yet he was proud of the
idea
of me—you know, a male, a lineage. I was a slot in a family tree. And then Ilona was in bondage to Clorinda and Tobias. A helpless woman, inconvenient in everyone’s lives.”

“A sad commentary.”

“Well, an epitaph for a failed life.”

“She could have left. She could have made a life for herself. A schoolteacher, something else. A woman
can
define herself.”

His eyes got wide and bright. “You miss the point, Miss Ferber. That would have denied her the role of martyr, a role she wanted.”

“Then it’s been a successful life, no?” I ran my tongue over my lower lip. “She got what she wanted.”

“That’s always worse, no?”

I shifted the subject. “Is Constable Biggers still following you?”

“It’s almost a joke now. We nod at each other. I expect we’ll be having lunch shortly. I’ve become his life.”

“Well, there
is
a murderer in town.”

Dak froze, bit his lips. “I know, I know. It seems like it’s suddenly on the back page of the newspaper now. Evan—and Gus. Two people connected to me.”

“And with others, don’t forget.”

“But I’m the one who was on the outs with both.”

“You know, Dak, it seems to me that the roots of the murders reach back to Hollywood. Something happened
there
.”

He looked puzzled. “Why?”

“I sense it. Haven’t you thought about it? You must have. You and Evan and Gus and Nadine, all there, your brief marriage, explosive, Nadine’s sorry infidelity with Evan, Gus lurking on the sidelines. Anger, jealousy, resentment, piddling dreams—all simmering in the rarefied hot air of Hollywood. And then all of you appear in little Maplewood.”

“Yes, of course I’ve thought about that. When Miss Crawford opened the theater, it became a…I don’t know…a
reason
to be here. But I was here first. I was living here…”

“Then they came here because of
you
.”

He tensed up. “Coincidence?”

“No.” Emphatic, loud. “No. Something about
you
drew them here. Nadine is obvious. She wants reconciliation. She loves you.” Dak grinned at that. “But Gus followed Evan here. That made Evan angry. Gus’ Nazi sympathies may have distracted us from the truth—perhaps they have nothing to do with his murder. A political view that simply identified a character defect in the man. Evan, though—think about it. Why would he want a two- or three-week job here? Because
you
are here.”

Dak lapsed into silence. Upfront, some technician was fiddling with the stops on the Wurlitzer organ, and the intermittent bursts of sound jarred, annoyed.

Dak sighed. “But you know everything about Hollywood, Miss Ferber. It was so…so short a time—a time I didn’t deal well with. I
betrayed
Nadine, horribly. I know, I know. She slept with Evan. I don’t care because I know what Evan was capable of doing. Nadine felt alone—deserted by me. I didn’t stick up for her. I
abandoned
her. Nadine, for all the makeup and…and Hollywood worldliness…is real naïve.” His head tilted backward. “That’s why I like her.”

“Love her, Dak. That’s why you
love
her.”

“I guess so.”

“You don’t love Annika.”

Another long silence. His mouth trembled. “No, I don’t. But I respect…”

I gripped his forearm tightly. “Stop it. You can’t respect someone who always wants to tell you who you are. Stop it.”

He checked his watch and jumped up. “I have to get back. Frank will be on my case.”

“Just a minute, Dak. One more question. About Frank.”

Dak stepped back but didn’t sit down. “What?”

“Your mother was stunned to see Frank in town. I gather they knew each other back in Hollywood.”

“I asked her about that. She said he…well, pursued her, relentless. And she was involved and shortly married to my father, who was his friend. A betrayal. She claims Frank was sneaking behind my father’s back. They had a fight—I mean, my father and Frank, and Frank, she says, said some nasty things. Cruel things. So when she saw him with Nadine—and here in Maplewood, of all places—she was horrified. The last time she saw him was unpleasant. That was
before
I was born. A ghost from her past.”

I waited a bit. “And you believe that story?”

He squinted and glanced off toward the stage. “I do.”

“I don’t.”

He rolled his head, helpless. “But what else?”

“Does that sound like the Frank you know? Frank is taciturn, unobtrusive, a shadow.”

“Ah, but remember that it was back decades. I don’t know—1916 or so. They were young and hot-blooded—and it was Hollywood…”

“And now here he is again. Because of your mother?”

He was shaking his head. “Then wouldn’t he have contacted her? He’s in town, working on
The Royal Family
and other plays. If he chose to come here for that reason, wouldn’t he have called her? Or accidentally bumped into her in the Village? He’d find a way to reach her. And who waits a couple decades for a contact? Over twenty years.”

“I don’t know, but it seems to me everyone came to Maplewood for a reason that had nothing to do with my stunning debut as Fanny Cavendish.”