The War Against Miss Winter (6 page)

She stuck her head into the hallway. “Hey, girls! Rosie and Jayne got a cat.” Every door on the second floor burst open and our room filled with ten cooing women intent on coaxing kitty out from under the dresser. When he finally emerged, the women fought for the right to pet him with the same intensity displayed by bridesmaids competing for the bouquet.

“Oh, he’s adorable!”

“He’s soft as silk.”

“Is kitty hungry? Thirsty?”

Churchill lapped up the attention and pretended he was a normal cat. He rubbed his head between bosoms and bellies and stared longingly into ten different sets of eyes. It took fifteen minutes for the excitement to die down. By then Churchill was asleep on Ruby’s lap with his head hanging over her arm.

We were strong women, independent women. We lived on our own and we paid our own way. Yet we could be reduced to goo in the presence of a small mammal and we latched on to gossip like it was the air we breathed. Naturally, this could work to my advantage. Churchill and I were sworn enemies, but I didn’t have it in me to give him the gate. If, however, someone else snitched, I could lose the cat and keep my
conscience.

“Pipe this,” I said. “We can’t have a cat. Belle can’t know about the cat. If one of you says a peep about it, the cat’s gone.” Everyone nodded and murmured their understanding. Churchill’s tail curled into a
J
.

“We won’t say a word,” said Ruby. And for the first time in the history of the George Bernard Shaw, she was right.

I
GOT UP EARLY THE
next day and went right to the office. All was pretty much as I’d left it except that Agnes had removed Churchill’s leavings from my desk and the radiator felt as if it had been upped by ten degrees. The radio and I spent the first hour looking for any evidence of Raymond Fielding. When the only things that turned up were “hillbilly music” and the heat, I decided to grab some breakfast.

Ten minutes later I had a cup of java, a doughnut, and a plan to go back through the files I’d packed. As I returned to the office, I was knocked over by a one-two punch of cheap cologne.

“Hello?” I called out. Jim’s door stood open, but instead of being filled with the morning’s pale sun, a shadow devoured the light. “Hello?” I followed the shadow to Jim’s window and found a man in a black wool flogger and gray derby. He was as big as a skyscraper and weighed at least as much. He walked toward me until he was close enough for me to make out his Neanderthal-like features.

I should’ve took to the air, but I hated to waste a perfectly good doughnut. “May I help you?”

In his hand was a crude metal appliance that I took for a bean-shooter. He squeezed it as though he were readying the device for action. “Where’s the knob for the radiator?” he asked.

On closer examination, the tool appeared to be a well-worn set of pliers. “Underneath it.”

He shook his head and admonished me with the pliers. Apparently, having to remove them from his pocket was very inconvenient. “I turned it down. I hate it when a room’s too hot.” The tool was returned to his trench coat with a metallic tinkle that indicated it was one of several implements he carried.

“Thanks.” I tried to imagine what kind of man regularly toted tools on his person without the benefit of a belt or a box. None of the options were particularly savory.

His eyes drifted around the office, taking in the crates and stacks of files. “You moving?”

I decided to play it casual. Isn’t that what you were supposed to do during a bear attack? “I’m putting files into storage to make more space.” I returned to the outer office and set the coffee on my desk. He followed me into the reception area and hovered near the dieffenbachia. Without the light behind him, it was easier to see his puss. He had the soft, doughy features of a college athlete. He would’ve seemed harmless had his face been separated from his imposing body. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name,” I said.

“That’s ’cause I didn’t give it to you.” He put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the walls and ceiling. “I figured you’d close up the place with Jim gone.”

I leaned against my desk and tore my doughnut in half. “I guess you figured wrong.”

He approached Agnes’s desk and sat on its top. His hands left his pockets and rested on his knees. “Damn shame what happened to Jim.” He met my eyes. His were small and close together like a rodent’s. “Seems to me a wise head wouldn’t go leaving her office unlocked after something like that.”

As menacing as he was trying to be, I found him more irritating than intimidating. Give him a meatloaf and some varicose veins and he could be my ma. “Seems to me a smart man wouldn’t go breaking and entering in broad daylight.”

He crossed his arms. “It ain’t breaking if the door’s unlocked.” He gave me his profile and recognition flashed through my head.

“I know you!” I snapped my fingers, trying to place where I’d seen his mug. “Jim’s viewing—you were there with the other goons…er…sorry.”

If he was insulted, he didn’t show it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

My brain kept churning. “There was another time too—the subway the night Jim died. You were hiding behind a newspaper staring at me.” He kept his face impassive, resigned to not tip his mitt. “Oh, come on—I know it was you.”

He cracked his knuckles. “You don’t know from nothing.”

“Fine, I don’t
know from nothing
.” I was officially rankled. “Look, Mister…oh, I’m sorry, since you haven’t given me your moniker, I’m going to have to make one up for you. How about Frank? Since you’re in my office when I’m not, I’m going to assume we’re on a first name basis.” I took a bite of my doughnut. “Anyways,
Frank,
you can deny everything I say and continue doing that physical intimidation thing you like so much, or you can cut to the chase and tell me what you’re doing here. Because I’m awfully busy and I’d prefer you do whatever you came here for so we can both go about our day.” I took another bite of doughnut and washed it down with a swig of coffee. Frank kept staring at me. “Would you like some doughnut, Frank?”

His close-set eyes grew even closer. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”

I reluctantly tossed him the half I hadn’t eaten and watched him devour it in a single bite. He searched the desk for a napkin. When one didn’t materialize, he wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve, leaving behind a shadow of white powder.

“Word is you’re taking on Jim’s cases,” he said.

“Where did you hear that from?”

His hand grabbed at his chin as though he were feeling for a beard that was no longer there. “I’ve got my sources.”

“And is your source a client?” He didn’t say anything. Instead he maintained a stony stare that I suspected he honed through years of practice. “Oh, come on, Frank—you can be square with me.” Still nothing, and I knew he was waiting for me to spill. The question was, Why? I was positive Frank was the bruno at the funeral and on the subway, but I didn’t understand the reason behind his visit.

I chose my words carefully. “I’m finishing a case or two as a courtesy,
but I’m not taking on anything else.”

Frank jerked a nod and brushed the crumbs from his coat. The phone shrieked.

“Are we done?” I asked. He shrugged in reply. I rolled my eyes and lifted the receiver. “McCain and Son.”

“Rosie?” A little girl’s voice breathed my name.

“Just who I was hoping to hear from,” I said. “Anybody call?” Jayne had agreed to stay at the house in case I got a callback. My desperation for work had turned to delusion.

“Not yet.” There was a frantic quality to her voice that I wasn’t used to, a shaky tone that wordlessly implied
your mother’s dead
and
the rabbit died
. “Have you seen the
A.M
. papers?”

I turned away from Frank and lowered my voice. “No. Why?” In the background, Edward R. Murrow brought us up to date on the news from overseas. Was it time for his normal report, or had he chilled the airwaves with the dreaded words
We interrupt this program
?

Had something happened to Jack?

Jayne’s voice drifted into a whisper. “Raymond Fielding’s dead.”

Frank no longer seemed so innocuous. I shifted and spied him from the corner of my eye. “Isn’t that something?” I said to the phone. “Don’t worry, Jayne—she’ll pull through this. My grandmother had the exact same thing and she’s still kicking.”

“Is somebody there?” Jayne asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said, “and Gram’s a big woman too. Healthy or not, she could scare the pants off you with a single look.”

Frank yawned and cleaned his nails with a pen nib.

“Do you want me to come down?” Jayne asked.

“No, no. You go to the hospital and be with your family. I’ll take care of everything.”

“If I don’t hear back from you in ten minutes, I’m coming over,” said Jayne.

“All right. Bye.” I put the horn in the cradle and took a deep breath.

Frank stopped his manicure. “What’s wrong with your friend’s
grandma?”

“They’re not sure. She’s coughing up blood and has stomach pain.” There was a bulge in Frank’s flogger. When I concentrated on it, I could make out a butt and a barrel.

“She smoke?” asked Frank.

“Only when she’s on fire.” I picked up a stack of files and aimlessly shuffled them. “Are you staying long? I only ask because I order out for lunch and I’ll want to make sure there’s enough for two. That half a doughnut left me peckish.”

He grunted. “You’re an actress, right?”

I stopped shuffling and tried to figure out what gave me away. If he’d been in the office before, it was possible Jim had said something about me. Either that or it was my impeccable posture and well-supported voice. “Let me guess: You’re a fan?”

Frank shrugged. “You in movies?”

“Plays.”

He shook his head. “Never been to a play.” He leaned forward on the desk as if his back were bothering him. “So what do you do then—you pretend to be other people?”

I roosted on a reception chair. “There’s a little more to it than that.”

“Like what?”

If he didn’t have Raymond Fielding’s blood on his hands, I would’ve told him to go climb his thumb. As it was, I fought to explain my craft in twenty words or less. “For starters, there’s training. You have to learn how to use your voice, how to move, how to belong to a play.”

“I bet memorizing’s hard.”

I gave him a tight smile. “You get used to it.”

His eyes were glued on me. “How so?”

“I don’t know—there are tricks to remembering words. Everyone has their own system.” Was he worried I’d seen or heard something I wasn’t supposed to and committed it to memory?

“And crying,” he said. “I’ll never figure out how you do that whenever you want to. I bet you poke yourself in the eye when no one’s look
ing, right?”

I decided it wasn’t worth teaching him the finer points of emotional recall. “That’s right. Lots of eye poking, but only when onions aren’t available.”

He slapped his hands against his thighs to signal he was getting to his point. “So how does an actress become a gumshoe?”

“I’m not a gumshoe, Frank—I don’t have a ticket. I’m just playing one for the moment because nobody else wants the job. That’s how I get most of my roles.”

He stifled a cough with his hand. “I bet Jim taught you everything he knew.”

“Depends on the topic. Jim was pretty close-lipped about a lot of things.” Our eyes met and we silently challenged each other. If he wasn’t going to tell me his reason for being there, I wasn’t going to offer him any more than the basics. Frank looked at his watch, frowned, and began to wind it. “You waiting for someone?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He kicked his legs against the side of the metal desk. The office shimmied with the metallic boom. “’S cold outside. That’s why I’m here. Waiting.”

High-heeled, panicked footsteps sounded in the stairwell. Frank swung his tremendous noodle toward the door and his hand flinched toward the bulge in his trench coat.

“Easy, boy—it’s a friend of mine.”

His hand returned to his side. “You’ve got a lot of friends.”

“Only two that you know of. Even if we threw you into the mix, we wouldn’t have enough people for a party.”

Jayne rushed into the office blind to Frank’s presence. For someone who’d intended to spend the day sitting by the phone, she was dressed to the nines. “Rosie! Thank goodness you’re all right.” She saw Frank and slowly spun around to face him. As his enormity became apparent, she shrank until I had to strain my eyes to see her. “Hello there,” she said.

Frank rose from the desk as though he were remembering, after years of grandmotherly instruction, that this was what you did when a woman entered the room.

Jayne tilted her head back and stared up at the big lug. “I didn’t know you had company.” Fear entered her eyes. It was pushed aside by a grin that would’ve gotten a man slapped and his mother reprimanded.

I played at being hostess. “Jayne—Frank. Frank—Jayne.”

Frank returned to his perch. “You the Jane with the sick grandma?”

“That’s another Jayne,” I said. “This one’s an actress like me.”

Frank crossed his arms. “You know a lot of Janes.”

“It’s a popular name. I blame that Tarzan fellow.” I raised an eyebrow at my pal, waiting for her to come up with why she was here and how we could leave. She set her open pocketbook on a chair. A newspaper peeked out of the top of it.

“I bet you’re wondering why I was worried about Rosie,” said Jayne.

“It crossed my mind.” Frank’s eyes narrowed into twin raisins.

“Well…” Jayne paused and shrugged off her coat. Underneath it she had on a navy wool dress that was so snug I could make out the shape of a tissue in her pocket. “Last night Rosie got food poisoning. Bad food poisoning.” Her baby voice rose an octave. “I tried to check on her this morning, but she wasn’t home. Naturally, I panicked.” She turned her calves so Frank could take in her showgirl legs. “So I ran all the way here in these awful heels to make sure she wasn’t dead or worse.” She patted her platinum hair and widened her eyes. Jayne wore both her hair and her skirts short. It was her way of helping out with the war effort. “I bet I look a mess.”

Frank followed the curve of her body. “You don’t look so bad to me.”

She pursed her lips and wagged a finger at me. Tony B.’s rock winked in the light. “Shame on you, worrying me like that. All this time I’m thinking you’re at the hospital and you were here entertaining this big, handsome man.”

“You shouldn’t have worried your friend like that.” Frank unwrapped his arms and pulled at his cuffs. If Jayne was thawing him, it was going to be a long, slow spring.

“To make it up to me, Rosie, you have to go to lunch with me. I’m not going to take no for an answer.” She retrieved a compact from her
purse and powdered her nose. America’s squeakheart was giving the performance of her life. “Get your things and let’s scram.”

“It’s not up to me,” I said. “Frank’s waiting for somebody.”

Jayne put her coat back on. “He can wait in the stairwell.”

Frank rose, his girth blocking the light and changing the weather. “Maybe I don’t want to wait in the stairwell.”

Jayne’s coat fell past her shoulders and her breasts led her to Frank. Her voice turned breathy and her skin deepened in hue. “Frank, I know you don’t mean to be rude, but your tone isn’t going to do. Rosie is going with me, and if you don’t let us leave right this minute, we’re going to be late. I’m supposed to have lunch with my boyfriend, Tony B., and if I’m not on time I’ll never hear the end of it.” She put the hand bearing the ring on the lapel of Frank’s coat and smoothed the fabric. “You don’t want to make trouble for us, do you?”