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

  I raised my voice. “Not the building block of lasting friendship.”

  He shook his head. “You know, later on, I heard Dak telling Frank how much he hates me. Not Gus. Me!”

  “You seem to enjoy being hated, Evan,” George noted.

  Bea looked nervous. “Evan, you’re having fun with us, right?”

  George shot her a look. It was like a cold knife stuck into the ribs.

  “Sooner or later, everyone hates me.” Evan interlaced his fingers behind his head.

  “And that’s an enviable state?” George’s voice was chilly.

  “Of course. It just tells me that I’ve won yet again.”

  Chapter Five

  Two days later, returning to the inn after a lengthy and tiring morning rehearsal, I slowly climbed the flight of stairs to my room. Pausing in the hallway as I searched for my key, I heard a loud burst of chatter below in the lobby. I stepped back to the landing in time to see Evan leaning on the reception desk. Crazily, he was banging the reception bell, the ding ding ding punctuating his performance. His booming voice echoed off the old wood panels, up the stairs. Leaning over the banister, I saw him adjust a cuff, so mannered a gesture it seemed some stage business. He whistled. Finally, perhaps because there was no one left to annoy, he exclaimed to no one in particular, “A new home, and in style.”

  At that, he rushed up the stairs, and I wasn’t fast enough to escape him. I backed up, fumbled for my key, as he planted himself at the top of the stairs. “Ah, Miss Ferber, we’re neighbors.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “They told me you’re in room 21. Lucky 21. Mr. Kaufman is in 23. Well, I’m lucky 27, at the end of the hall.”

  “I thought your finances, sir, were…how should I say this?—meager?” I found my key and turned away.

  He let out a fierce, booming roar. He stepped close to me, leaning in, his face beaming, and I smelled onions on his breath. I backed off. “Please, Evan. This is a quiet inn.” Down the hall a door cracked open for a second, then was quietly shut.

  He was carrying some parcels wrapped in brown paper and tied with a white cord. Now, shifting his stance, one toppled to the floor and rested on the exquisite oriental carpet. Amused, he kicked it with his boot, as though maneuvering a football down the hall toward room 27. “New shirts. Blue and tan and…No holes in the elbows. When I take you and Mr. Kaufman out to dinner tonight, my treat, I’ll look as stylish as you two.” The kicked parcel banged into a wall. The paper ripped. Then, insanely, he dropped his other packages and kicked them down the hall.

  “One, I have other plans for dinner.” Though, of course, I didn’t. I fixed him in my stare. “And two, you’ll never be more than a new shirt, sir.”

  He ignored the slight—I doubted that he heard me. “How about a pearl tie-pin? Real gold-plated. Like a nineteenth-century gambler on your showboat?” He tapped a small package in a breast pocket.

  “Pearls?” I questioned. “Accompanying swine?”

  He didn’t care, laughing so hard I thought he’d double over. “Now, now, Miss Ferber. You are a kidder.”

  Then, in a garish display worthy of, say, my own dandy Gaylord Ravenal leaping onto a showboat from a Mississippi levee, he withdrew a generous wad of cash from a pocket, fanned the bundle before me, and backed off, still kicking the parcels strewn before him.

  I called after him. “Good fortune, Evan?”

  “I’ve been waiting for this for a month now. An uncle I never met—the first Evan, conveniently—died and the money was delivered this morning. Didn’t you see me skipping out of the Maplewood Bank & Trust?” A grin plastered to his face. “You probably missed me at rehearsal. I had a bit of shopping to do.”

  “You’re a lucky man.”

  “Luck ain’t got nothing to do with it.” His own words sounded puzzling to him because he paused, furrowed his brow, and then announced, “Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, it pays to have rich relatives, even if you don’t know them.” He grinned stupidly. “It’s like my hard work has paid off.”

  With that, he scooped up his packages and disappeared into his new room. As I stood there, pondering his last puzzling line, the door to George’s room opened, and a fuzzy head popped out.

  “Edna, really, making a scene in the hallway.”

  “You didn’t hear my boisterous voice.”

  “But you seem to attract a rag-tag element to perform for you.”

  “Did you hear Evan? He’s awash in cash.” I lowered my voice. “A dead uncle or…”

  “Edna, you’re so gullible.”

  “I didn’t say I believed it. I’m just reporting…”

  “There is no dead uncle. You forget I know the family. There’s a struggling widowed mother who bothers Bea with long, weepy letters and mournful phone calls. She was an only child.”

  “Then…”

  “A fabrication, Edna.”

  “But why?” I glanced in the direction of Evan’s closed door. I could hear bureau drawers opening and closing.

  “You should ask him. He seems to follow you around.” A pause. “Or is it the other way around? You’re one of those giddy swooners after matinee idols? Did you weep at Valentino’s casket? I thought I recognized your prostate body in the news photos.” He closed his door behind him and buttoned his sports jacket. “Lunch, Edna? My treat. You can tell me why you missed a cue this morning at rehearsal.”

  “George, I’m an actress now.”

  He laughed. “Keep telling yourself that, my dear.”

  Moments later, standing on the sidewalk, we watched Evan run around a parked Studebaker roadster, gleaming metallic blue and white, top down. He circled it as though it were elusive prey, just out of reach, but painfully tantalizing.

  His voice bubbly, he yelled to us. “The car’ll take me back to Hollywood.” He danced around it, a little drunk.

  I walked by, but George deliberated, bending to look at a fender. Now George never drove—didn’t believe in driving. Automobiles alarmed him. He would gladly be driven places, but the idea of his getting behind the wheel of a car was ludicrous and unacceptable. Bea drove, and poorly. George kept his eyes closed. He had to be dragged onto airplanes. Boats sickened him, yet he worshiped taxicabs because they had backseats. I drove lumbering town cars at my Connecticut estate, usually with the seats crammed with egg cartons or pool equipment—or, sometimes, my carping mother.

  “Get in,” Evan roared, opening a passenger door.

  To my surprise, George slipped into the car, and Evan motioned for me to occupy a backseat. Reluctantly, offering George a disapproving look, I sat in back, and Evan, whooping like a back-lot Indian in a two-reel oater, sped off, the wheels of the car spitting pebbles and dust into the air. George had rested his arm on the back of the driver’s seat and I tapped it, leaning forward. “We’ll be killed, of course.”

  “Really, Edna!”

  “I’d rather die a different death. Or, at least, with a companion less annoying.”

  George laughed. “Sit back, Edna.”

  Evan spun around town, passing cars, blowing through stop signs and lights, waving at strangers. A child, really, and not a very bright one. Yet a child propelling two tons of metal toward some dark abyss. We’d crash and I’d be strangled by my three strands of pearls, or, worse, be impaled on a gearshift. He pulled into the parking lot of a White Castle hamburger stand, just off Springfield, and pointed. “Anybody hungry?” But he didn’t linger, throwing the car into gear and speeding off.

  We sailed by the Assembly of God temple, where Evan slowed down near the massive front doors and pointed. “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.”

  He put the car in park, revved the engine noisily, and blew the horn. Dak and Annika stepped from the front entrance, squinted into the sun at the shiny blue convertible. I noted Annika gripping Dak’s arm, and he whispered
something to her. She stepped back, pulling at him, but Dak moved toward us, a puzzled look on his face. Annika reluctantly followed him, her face grim. Dak’s look took in Evan and George, but rested, baffled, on me, the kidnapped spinster in the backseat. Evan waited until he was near and then leaned on the horn, a discordant bah-bah-bah that nearly drove me to distraction.

  “Mine.” Evan raised his body in the seat and waved his hand around the car.

  Annika stood behind Dak but her hand gripped his elbow. Then, brazenly, she moved toward the car. “Could you show some respect for the house of God?”

  “Mine.” Evan was looking at Annika.

  “Where’d you get the money?” Dak asked suddenly.

  “Ask Miss Ferber.” Evan pointed over his shoulder but did not turn around.

  “A dead uncle.” My voice flat, dull. “A conveniently dead uncle. From the pages of a novel only Evan has read.”

  “Dakota, let’s get out of here.” Now Annika sounded panicky. Her grip on Dak’s elbow tightened. “Please don’t go with him.”

  “Wanna jump in, Annika? We’ll leave Dakota in the dust.”

  But at that moment Evan gunned the engine and the car flew off, jerking back and forth for a second, tossing me around the backseat. At the next corner he slowed to a crawl and said to George, who looked pale and nauseous, his eyes shut, “Dak doesn’t love that horrible harpy.”

  “What?” From George, in a faraway voice.

  “Dak doesn’t want to be God’s missionary. Or married to that witch from Salem.”

  “What?” George repeated.

  Evan said through clenched teeth, “Those two pray to the wrong God. My God put cash in my pocket. God loves rascals and ne’er-do-wells. Everybody knows that. Ain’t that a riot? God holds the note for this car. So I guess it does a soul good to…to believe.”

  Then he lapsed into silence and turned the car around. It was as though he’d made a point, and that moment ended. He dropped us off at the Jefferson Village Inn and sped off.

  “Edna, you’re so pale.”

  “George, this is all your fault.”

  An hour later, finishing lunch, I left George and headed back to the theater for an appointment with wardrobe. One of my costumes needed adjustment. I’d scheduled a short meeting with the wardrobe mistress who’d tactfully insinuated that I’d put on a few extra pounds since my fitting in New York a month back. My task completed, I opened the front door to leave, and I saw Evan’s shiny convertible parked alongside the train station, but he was nowhere to be seen. The rear seat was heaped high with cardboard boxes.

  But then I spotted him. He was in deep conversation with Nadine Novack, both partially sheltered by a panel truck. She stepped away from him, angry, knocking his hand away, and he threw back his head, laughing. I watched her closely: her body tense, her arms held out in front of her as though demanding distance. Even from across the street I could see her shaking her head and mouthing a word over and over: no no no. She backed away, turned, and suddenly, in a brazen move, he grabbed both of her shoulders, swung her back to face him, and held her. She pushed against him but couldn’t free herself. He was laughing, but there was no pleasure in it: a cruelty there, a maniac’s raw howl. Finally, desperate, she kicked his foot, broke free and wildly slapped him in the face.

  She ran toward the theater and I stepped back, hidden by the half-shut door.

  He came after her and yelled, “I can tell them, you know.”

  She shifted back. “And what good would that do? It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters now…you…you…”

  “Is that why you’re in Maplewood? I knew it. That’s why you came to this hole-in-a-wall in the boondocks.”

  Pleading in her voice. “I got a job.”

  “I’ll tell Annika. How about that? Did Dak mention you to her?” A dark laugh. “I bet he didn’t, that sissy. Are you his forbidden secret? Nadine Novack, my foot. What name will you use next? She won’t be happy to know you’re in town.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. It just doesn’t.”

  “Oh, but it does.”

  “Just leave Dak alone now.”

  “He’s a weak, pathetic ass, that Dak. ‘Leave me alone, Evan!’ Yeah, his mommy wants him to be tomorrow’s Billy Sunday. It ain’t gonna happen. He’s a milquetoast, a namby-pamby, drawing those pictures. A sissy artist.”

  “Leave him alone. Leave Annika alone. They got to be married. They…”

  “Over my dead body. Or, I should say, over your dead body.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  Suddenly, there in the middle of the street, Nadine broke down sobbing. Evan, startled, looked bewildered and jumped into his car. What he did next was bizarre. He drove around her, a complete loop, at one point coming so close she could have touched a fender. She froze there, watching. He circled her, mocking.

  And I watched, too, stepping out onto the landing, peering into Evan’s car. As Evan circled her, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, defiant, his hands gripped the wheel so tightly they seemed blocks of dark stone.

  When he was gone, I approached Nadine, taking her hand. She looked into my face and tried to smile. “He’s crazy, you know.”

  “Why does he scare you so?”

  She shook her head wildly. “He doesn’t.”

  “He hates Dak.”

  “He wants to hurt Dak.”

  “But why?”

  “Because he can.” She hurried past me into the theater.

  ***

  George and I sat on the Adirondack deck chairs late in the afternoon, and I discussed Evan’s nasty behavior with Nadine. “Help me understand what’s going on?”

  “I have a confession, Edna,” George finally said.

  “Oh Lord, no, George. I’m not good with confessions. Especially yours. They always disarm me.”

  He sighed. “I suspected Evan was trouble all along. I mean, I hinted my dislike—my distress with him being here.” A sly smile. “Or, at least, I expected you to pick up on my offhand observations. But over the years I’ve heard Bea and his mother chatting—not to me, of course, because I don’t abide gossip, but the two talking in soft, hidden voices. Evan has a cruel streak, I learned. He’s done some horrible things to his mother—stealing, for one. Another time he shoved her aside. Just the two of them—the father long dead. She keeps hoping he’ll…well, you get the picture. He gets pleasure from manipulating people. People tell things to good-looking people because they believe good-looking people are moral and trustworthy and decent. It’s a common character flaw of humanity. Evan stores the information.”

  “Just what are you saying?”

  “When Bea mentioned how she got Cheryl to hire Evan—I mean, she begged, that woman—I got nervous. I think Bea lied to Cheryl. At Cheryl’s apartment, when he showed up, I didn’t like it. I should have stopped it. Then and there.”

  “Your silence punishes me.”

  “Ridiculous, Edna. Of course not. He’ll keep his distance from you.” A sickly smile. “He knows what battles he’d lose.” A pause. “Someone is always hurt when he shows up. Bea knew that.”

  “I won’t allow this. Perhaps a few choice words with Cheryl.” I’d seen her cruising around town hours before in her second-hand Mercer.

  “Somebody is gonna get hurt.”

  “Stop saying that, George. You’re giving me the willies.”

  We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, lazy in the hot afternoon, watching the quiet street. I expected Evan to blaze by, toot-tooting in the shiny convertible or carrying his nouveau riche trappings up to his new room, but that did not happen.

  What did happen was more unsettling. A rinky-dink pickup sputtered to a stop by the train station, and we watched Gus Schnelling and Meaka Snow get out. They had been arguing about something, both yelling at each other. But then, as though a
switch were pulled, they stopped and embraced quickly, mechanically, all was forgiven.

  For fifteen minutes they assailed souls stepping away from the train station, handing out leaflets, their faces grim. Most folks rebuffed them, some loudly, an old man actually shoving aside Gus’ arm. George and I stared at them, this squat, ungainly young couple. Gus had a kind of fierce bulldog masculinity, all those abrupt movements and preening struts. His gruff voice alarmed passersby. Meaka said nothing the whole time, though I noticed she shot occasional glances at him, and none too happy ones. The taskmaster checking in. From across the street she appeared a cold, emotionless person, the termagant with her rotund body and the severe haircut. Both automatons, I realized, expressionless characters from some European avant-garde drama. Capek’s futuristic robots. Meaka the mechanical doll, the robotic inamorata. Gus had supposedly wooed her to his demonic cause, and now, the fervent convert, she outpaced him in her fire and drive. The human being devoid of personality, infused, rather, with ice and vinegar.

  At one point Meaka spotted George and me observing them, and she nudged Gus. They’d exhausted their armfuls of leaflets, and Gus kept pointing to a wristwatch—he even opened the door of the old Ford pickup and started to step in, a man in a hurry—but Meaka kept pointing at us.

  “I think we are cynosures of local amusement,” George observed.

  “Lord, the Katzenjammer Kids of the body politic.”

  Reluctantly, Gus followed a determined Meaka across the street, both stopping at the foot of the stairs.