Final Curtain: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) Read online

  “I’m a plagiarist. I steal everybody’s happy moments.”

  I laughed. “God knows what they…” I stopped.

  Frank and Nadine had left the restaurant, standing in front of the entrance, taking leave of each other. Leaning into her neck, Frank said something that made her laugh. She threw back her head and gently touched his arm. Then Frank turned away, headed up the street, walking at a brisk clip. Nadine watched him walk away and then headed in the other direction, pausing in front of a small rooming house. THE HARWINTON. FOR WOMEN. GOOD EATS. She fumbled in her purse for a key, dropped it, then lit a cigarette. She looked back up the street, but Frank was already out of sight.

  She turned into the walkway and climbed the front steps. For a moment, enjoying the night, she leaned against the balustrade, breezily smoking. I sensed movement from across the street. A clump of small trees, a line of trimmed hedges, a garden trellis covered in purple wisteria. A confusion of night shadows under a faint moonlit sky. A figure shifted in the darkness. A solitary man stepped onto the sidewalk. Even from where I sat I could tell he was monitoring Nadine’s movements so intently that he tripped on a stone, swore under his breath. He stood there, watching, frozen, while Nadine, unaware, snubbed out her cigarette, flicked it into the bushes, and walked inside.

  The figure unfroze and in the still night I heard a heavy sigh, lone and plaintive and awful.

  The slight graceful body rocked back and forth.

  I recognized who it was. Dakota. Dak.

  Chapter Four

  We began our rehearsals. By the second day I’d learned my lines, though I had trouble with my onstage movements. I felt awkward and clumsy, aware that each step was being watched—and judged. George, to his credit, whispered encouraging advice, and was only cruel now and then. His “You can embody the character, Edna, and quite well” was immediately balanced by his grumbled remark, “Edna dear, you move like a wobbly bowling pin.” George rarely complimented. “You’re supposed to be good,” he once famously quipped. “I’ll tell you when you’re not.” But, ultimately, I came around. Yes, I could survive a week of performance without undue embarrassment and fatal mistake.

  Nervous, I chain-smoked Lucky Strikes during our breaks, and George purposely avoided me. He detested smoking, especially by women. “Really, Edna, it makes you look like a fishwife.”

  I ignored him.

  I looked out into the vast theater and trembled as I envisioned it filled with over a thousand eager theatergoers. A beautiful space, the Maplewood, with its large oval dome, its cut-glass chandeliers, the walls painted in shades of carnival red and sky blue, the proscenium arch a light green with a hint of red. An old-style theater, reminiscent of Manhattan’s movie palaces of the Twenties. Here, Cheryl had told us, the first movie shown had been Valentino’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. A Wurlitzer organ punctuated the silent frames.

  Here, in a few days, I’d take the stage—not so silently.

  Louis Calhern and Irene Purcell, who played Tony and Julie Cavendish, my feckless, impulsive grandchildren, were troopers, though both seemed hell-bent on catching the late-afternoon Lackawanna train back into Manhattan after each rehearsal. George and I shared a cup of coffee with both, a hasty lunch, and all was shoptalk. “You’re staying in Maplewood?” Louis stammered when I mentioned my rooms at the Jefferson Village Inn. He looked as though I’d signed in at a leper colony for a lark.

  “Ambience,” I told him.

  “There is none,” Louis insisted.

  Irene nodded. “How many oak trees can one sit under, Edna?”

  George interjected, “Edna, the peripatetic novelist, is only happy on location. In fact, by the end of the week’s run—when we close on Sunday to huzzahs and bouquets of roses at my feet—she will have sat under all those oak trees. As well as a few sycamores, for good measure.”

  During those first two days, as I polished my lines and wandered around town, George was right: I did like to soak in the atmosphere of the locales I visited. I relaxed, enjoying myself, lighting a cigarette when I wanted George to disappear. No gardeners worried me about insidious grubs, no poultry men battled over the building of the coops, and no mother was there to guide me, as they used to say in the Victorian novels by The Duchess. Here I was, a fiftyish spinster always apologizing to a mother I could never please. Yes, Mother. No. Yes. In frightening moments of reflection I believed I would always be that skittish little girl rushing home from school in Ottumwa, Iowa, or in Appleton, Wisconsin. Yes, Mama. Was it any wonder I sought out the far reaches of America’s hinterland for plot lines? Eventually I’d take shelter in an igloo up in the Arctic Circle. I’d freeze to death as the aurora borealis painted the night sky. I was sure of it.

  “If I lived with my mother, Edna,” George told me whenever we discussed Julia Ferber’s hold on me, “I’d be up on charges.”

  During those two days of hard work, incredible novelty, and moments of unexpected joy, I had little time to consider Evan Street, who, despite being an anonymous understudy, managed to insinuate his annoying presence into the company. Even if you did not spot him lurking in the wings, script in hand, as though waiting for Louis Calhern to mysteriously disappear or at least stumble into the orchestra pit, even then you heard his thundering voice somewhere—that raucous look-at-me laugh, the loose-cannon rumble of his flattery, and the overtly dry cough from the back of the theater as George as director admonished Louis for a poorly delivered line. He was the understudy who filled the corners of the theater. The handsome man who’d always assumed the innate authority of those God-given looks, the lover with the cobalt-blue eyes, the Leyendecker chin, and the Richard Harding Davis exoticism. The privilege of accidental birth, that boy…blessed by a foolhardy God.

  By the end of the second day, exhausted, the troupe gathered outside under the shade trees on green slatted benches, fed lemonade and cookies from Mamie Trout’s café. We were all pleased with ourselves. The veteran actors were less wary of me, the rich and presumptuous interloper, now that I’d proven I could say a line without stumbling—and that I, the imperious playwright, refused to lord it over folks. They bantered easily with me—which I relished. In fact, I was still in awe of them, these hardy souls who lived in front of footlights and never knew when they’d work again.

  During our lazy afternoon, I leaned against an oak trunk, my eyes tired. Suddenly I heard Evan’s voice calling out: “Gus, hey, Gus.”

  I stepped a few feet toward the sidewalk. A short, stocky man paused in front of me, turned with his hands on his hips, and swore under his breath. Evan rushed up to him and clamped a hand on the shorter man’s shoulder, but Gus, his face bright red and his chin rigid, shook it off.

  “Evan, you’re a goddamn fool, you know.”

  “We gotta talk, Gus. Sooner or later.”

  Gus stepped away. Dressed in workman’s clothing, a worn denim shirt and faded dungarees, Gus glared at Evan. For a second, puzzled, he scratched his head, messing up the few strains of pale, wispy blond hair that circled a prominent bald spot.

  “I don’t like what you said to Meaka, Evan. You’re a mean bastard.”

  A mock shrugging of his shoulders. “I was joking with her.”

  “You called her a tub of butter.”

  Evan roared. “Well, she is a bit…round.”

  Gus poked his finger in Evan’s chest. “She’s my girl, Evan. How do you think it makes her feel?”

  Evan bit his lip. “Christ, Gus, I didn’t think she had any feelings at all. She’s like, you know, a…a machine. And that political crap she lays on you…”

  Gus flared up, hot. “It ain’t right.”

  Evan lowered his voice. “Hey, why’d you have to follow me to this dumb town? A master electrician, my foot.” A phony laugh. “I didn’t even know you knew how to string two wires together.”

  “I know plenty.” He moved closer,
and I almost missed his words, shielded as I was by some hedges. “And you know I know plenty. You thought I wouldn’t show up? I’m on to you, Evan. I ain’t a fool.”

  “You got no business butting in.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Evan laughed nervously. “All right, all right. Just keep out of my way. Friends, right? Hey, we go way back.”

  “Hollywood for a couple months don’t count for ‘way back,’ Evan. We ain’t never been friends.”

  “I don’t want trouble. You know, I gotta trust you now.”

  “And you ain’t gonna have trouble, but I won’t let this one go. I know things.”

  Evan hissed, “Stop saying that.” Then he went on in a tinny voice, “I didn’t know you’d show up with Meaka. Why do you two got to be so…you know, that scary political crap.”

  “Where I go, she goes.”

  “Christ, Gus, you’re talking nonsense.”

  “Just remember—you do something—I get mine. You hear?”

  “Don’t worry.” A long pause. “You tell Meaka?”

  “I ain’t a fool.” He started to walk away, but swung back. “Leave off the rotten comments, Evan. Meaka doesn’t like you to begin with.”

  “Hey, it’s mutual.”

  “If she was a chorus girl, you’d be after her with smooth talk…”

  Evan broke in. “So you got no worries when I’m around.”

  “Never mind. Just be careful.”

  Evan walked away. Gus leaned against the entrance to Strubbe’s Ice Cream Parlor, reaching for a cigarette and lighting it. When a schoolboy tried to walk in, Gus took his time moving. Alone, he glanced toward the departing Evan and muttered, “Burn in hell.”

  From where I stood, still unseen, I could see his profile: fierce, stony, his lips razor thin, his skin ashy and cold. There was something frightening about him, a man who could menace, or destroy, without conscience. He looked…dangerous.

  Suddenly he yelled, “Here! Here! Hey, Meaka!” He sucked in on the cigarette, blew smoke out, and then spat to the side as a young woman tottered from across the street. He flicked the lit cigarette away, and it bounced off the plate-glass window.

  “I saw you talking to that ass.” Her first words, biting and raspy.

  As blond as Gus, Meaka was also short, barely five feet. But while he was muscular and thick, a sinew-bound workman, she was wide and soft, the pale yellow dress hugging her bones and hips. She looked as if she’d fallen into a dress tailored for someone else, but decided she didn’t care. It rode up on one side, bunched around her waist.

  I walked from behind the hedges and strolled past the couple, both of whom got quiet. Meaka was whining about Evan’s rudeness and cruelty—“You sure know how to pick them, Gus”—but clammed up as I neared. Both glared at me, and I shivered all of a sudden, involuntarily, surprising myself. There was something about the raw harshness of their mutual stares—frankly, I felt to my marrow that they knew me. And that knowing—whatever did that mean? —guaranteed they hated me. The idea of me. Irrational, that intuitive moment—but I trusted it.

  I could never abide such cavalier dismissal, especially from louts, so I stepped back, feigned a smile, and addressed the gaping Gus. “I am Edna Ferber. Haven’t I seen you working at the theater?”

  Silence, heavy and ugly. I realized that Gus was the third man I’d spotted that first night during the confrontation in the bar lounge—with Evan and Dak exchanging words, pushing, shoving. Now, perturbed by my interruption, he bit his lower lip, raised his chin arrogantly, and answered, “Yeah.”

  “And you, my dear?” To the smoldering Meaka then biting the nail of her stubby index finger, where a thin line of dried blood had collected.

  A hoarse grunt. “Meaka Snow.”

  “What a lovely name. You work at the theater?”

  “No.”

  “Then…”

  But I got no further because Meaka clumsily grabbed Gus’ elbow, poked him in the side, and the two stepped off the sidewalk into the street so precipitously that a passing car narrowly missed clipping both. Meaka, to my horror, raised her fist at the disappearing car, and screamed, “Damn you!”

  I headed to the Full Moon Café for some iced cherry soda. Mamie Trout, smiling broadly, welcomed me back and directed me to a seat by the front window. “Got some chocolate cake with your name on it, Miss Ferber.”

  “Every piece of chocolate cake comes with my name on it, Mamie.”

  She had a hearty laugh, long and throaty, and absolutely infectious. She pointed to a young woman sitting by herself at one of the back tables. “Another fugitive from your theater.” She pronounced it thee-eh-ter.

  Nadine Novack, Frank Resnick’s dinner companion from last night, was sitting quietly, nursing a lemon phosphate, her face bowed close to the straw. The actress with the self-consciously alliterative stage name. Of course, I’d noticed her when I walked in, especially her eagerness when the bell clanged—and her disappointed look when she spotted the tiny frumpy lady with the three strands of pearls. Real pearls, in fact.

  Nosy, I decided to join her. She fidgeted as she watched me approach her table, hastily looking beyond me toward the door. “Hello,” I began, “I’m Edna Ferber.”

  A whispered, uncertain voice, girlish. “I know.” Then a weak smile. “I saw you come in.”

  “You’re the understudy for the part of Julie?”

  She nodded. “And everyone else this summer—Gloria Swanson, even—though I’ll probably never be onstage.”

  “You are…”

  “Nadine Novack. I’m sorry. I’m rude.”

  “Not at all. May I sit down?”

  A slight titter. “I guess I really am rude, Miss Ferber. Please.” She motioned to a seat and I sat down. She glanced quickly toward the door.

  “You’re a very pretty young girl.”

  She flushed a faded pink and closed her eyes. “That’s very sweet of you.” She looked toward the door again.

  “I’m interrupting. You’re expecting someone.”

  “Oh, no. I mean…sometimes other actors come…crew…or…This is a popular place.” A deep intake of breath. “I’m sorry. I’m babbling.”

  “No matter, really, Nadine. I find it oddly comforting after some of the bluster and noisome breast-beating I’ve witnessed these past few days.”

  “Well, you know, actors…showing off.”

  “I imagine you’re not a show-off.”

  Her eyes got wide. “Someday maybe I’ll have something to…yes, you know…show off.”

  I liked her. Such a petite girl, gamin faced, with wavy auburn hair and brilliant round hazel eyes with a hint of burnished gold in them, charming, lustrous, inviting. A wraith, this girl, a frail woman who nevertheless seemed to have an inner glow, a spirit. A Clara Bow face, but without the doll-like vacuity. Pretty, yes, but a bit mousy under the unnecessary layers of glossy lipstick and red rouge. Yet I imagined her—this neophyte actress—as an unassuming woman who could erupt into dynamic life and character and brio when she walked onstage. It was the intelligence in those eyes—and the real warmth in that upturned face.

  “I saw you having dinner last night with Frank Resnick.”

  A hesitation. “Yes, he’s very fatherly to me. He feels he has to protect me.” She giggled. “The dark alleys and squalid corners of Maplewood.”

  “Why are you here…in Maplewood?”

  The question startled her. She fumbled. “I…well…a job. Hollywood failed me…and Broadway, so I interviewed with Miss Crawford and…well, I wanted to come here.”

  “Maplewood?”

  “I mean…well, yes.”

  “But why?”

  Her face closed up, dreaminess clouding her eyes, as though suddenly she realized she’d said too much. She looked down at her trembling hands and immediately, dram
atically, buried them in her lap.

  The door opened and Dak entered, rushing in and out of breath. But he stopped short in the entrance, mouth open, staring directly at our table. Nadine emitted a faint gasp, almost a warning, and Dak twisted around, ready to flee. The screen door slammed against his back. Nadine looked down.

  I whispered. “That good-looking young man has an interesting name. Dakota. I’ve briefly met him. He’s…”

  “I have to go.” She stood so quickly she knocked her empty glass onto the floor, where it smashed into pieces. “Oh, Lord,” she cried and reached for her purse and scattered a few coins onto the table. A meaningless nod at me and she rushed out of the restaurant, brushing by a startled Dak who was doing his best not to look at her—or, I supposed, reach out to stop her, hold her, put a calming palm against her trembling face.

  Even when she was gone, he still didn’t move, as though he’d forgotten his destination, and Mamie Trout, walking in from the kitchen, waved at him. “Posing for animal crackers, Dak?”

  He slid into a chair.

  When Mamie approached him, he waved her away, but not brusquely, a mere gesture that suggested fatigue. She frowned at the shattered glass on the floor and went back into the kitchen.

  I waited, nursing my cherry soda, trying not to stare at the appealing young man. So ethereal his looks, so wistful, the long swan’s neck and the puppy-dog eyes. An unintended sigh escaped his throat as he closed his eyes. Then, slowly, he reached into an over-the-shoulder bag he’d dropped onto the floor, extracted a pad and pen, and furiously began to sketch. From where I sat I could discern a hastily delineated table and chair against a backdrop of a lunch counter.

  “You’re an artist?” I raised my voice.

  He looked up, offered a thin smile, but didn’t answer. He looked nervous, suddenly laying his palm over the sketch, as if I’d discovered him in some compromising vice. He laid down his pencil on the table but then grabbed it, his fingers gripping it tightly. Nervous, he stared away from me.

  “We’ve met. Briefly. Do you remember? In here, in fact. You were with a young girl…Your name is Dakota.”