The Winter of Her Discontent (14 page)

Who did?
I nodded solemnly. “Is that why she came back to New York?”

Zelda had stopped singing and started racing through a tongue twister: Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers. A Peck of Pickled Peppers Peter Piper Picked. “Paulette needed to be surrounded by people who cared about her. She felt so…alone after it all happened. I think she was starting to think she was cursed.”

So I had been right. What would've happened if George had died instead of her? Would she have sworn off men or continued to test fate until she'd driven herself mad?

What would I do if Jack were declared dead? Would I ever recover, or would I assume that any future relationships I entered would be equally doomed?

“Are you all right, Rosie?”

I shook myself back into reality. “Sorry. My mind drifted. I was
just thinking about how hard it must've been for her to move on after each death.”

“You have to, though, don't you? If someone loved you—if they
really
loved you—they wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your days miserable.”

It was an interesting point. I'd always assumed the dead would demand fidelity the same way the absent insisted on it. “What are you making?”

Izzie's needles came back to life. “Socks.”

“For a friend?”

“For whoever wants them. I knit a couple of pairs a week and send them overseas.”

“Wow. I can't imagine being able to make one sock a year.”

“I'm a fast knitter. I figure it's the least I can do. My pop got trench foot in the Great War. He always said it would've made a world of difference if he'd had an extra pair of clean, dry socks.”

I didn't know what trench foot was, but it was clearly something to avoid.

“Last Christmas the four of us made three dozen pairs. After that I swore I'd never knit again, but it seems like such a small thing to do, you know?”

I knew all right. If I learned nothing else from the memorial service at the Winter Garden, I did realize I was doing absolutely nothing useful.

“What else do you do?” I said. “To help, I mean.”

“Not nearly enough, I'll tell you. All of us donate blood of course. And we each have pen pals. I'm planning to start a Victory Garden when the weather warms up. I was helping with the Theater Wing food drive for a while, but now that I'm doing this show I don't have much time for it.”

“Ruby says you go to the Stage Door Canteen too?”

She fought a yawn. Bloodshot eyes attested to her late night of dancing. “I can't call that work. We may cook a few meals, but we're there for the fun.”

Years before I'd sworn that when I finally made a name for myself I would focus on becoming a good person to balance out the inherent self-centeredness of my profession. I would volunteer for Stage Relief, donate money, and lend my name and face to causes that deserved to benefit from it. That was all far away, though—hypothetical promises I'd never have to collect on if I never became any more than what I already was. It was easy to make a promise when there was no guarantee you'd have to fulfill it.

Izzie, Zelda, and Olive didn't have to make empty promises. They were already living the lives I should've been living—that all of us should've been living. They entertained soldiers at the Stage Door Canteen. They knit them socks. They wrote to pen pals and gave blood. And what did I do? I complained about censored letters and a lousy dancing job and an imprisoned man who was probably getting exactly what he deserved. I was a long, long way from sainthood.

“Rosie?” Izzie stopped knitting and rested her hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I want to help,” I said. “What can I do?”

 

Izzie's response to my plea for something to do to help the war effort was to give me her ball of yarn and ask me to hold it taut. This was hardly what I had in mind, but I figured I had to start somewhere. Sainthood wasn't reached in a day.

The sock had grown by three inches when Walter Friday finally emerged. Dark gray smudges beneath his eyes tattled that he'd either taken to playing football or he'd given up sleeping. He was wearing the same suit I'd seen him in the day before, and despite his tucking in his shirt and straightening his tie, it had to be apparent to everyone that he'd taken to passing out in whatever he happened to be wearing at the moment of collapse.

“Good morning, ladies.” His speech was slurred. I wondered how much whiskey he'd gotten in his morning coffee and if I might be
able to get some. “I'm sure you have all heard by now that Rachelle will be stepping in for Olive.”

I looked around for this mysterious Rachelle who'd usurped my part and found Friday starting at me.

“Rosie,” I whispered. “My name is Rosie.”

“Isn't that what I just said?”

I shook my head to tell him it wasn't. Zelda stifled a laugh. Izzie looked heavenward. And Minnie, whom I hadn't seen until that moment, started like someone had goosed her.

Despite my less-than-ideal introduction, rehearsal went remarkably well. While I by no means stepped seamlessly into Olive's part, Zelda and Izzie were such giving actresses that when I was uncertain about what to do next, they literally took me by the hand and guided me. Minnie showed me no such courtesy. She wasn't bad, as I'd noted before, but she acted in a bubble, her lines never quite reaching the person they were intended for.

I'd heard that at his height Friday was a monomaniacal director, the kind of man who sat in his office with a miniature mock-up of the stage and moved chess pieces that stood in for his actors until he had precisely the blocking he'd wanted. I'd even heard he was prone to getting up onstage and manhandling his performers until they'd done exactly as he wished. Today he was slouched in his seat while we worked, a pair of cheaters protecting his eyes from the stage lights. It was impossible to know if he was happy with what any of us were doing, or if he was using the opportunity to catch up on much-needed sleep.

“Is he always like this?” I asked Izzie. The three of us were spending our lunch break across the street, eating what the deli claimed was pepper steak but which tasted suspiciously like chicken.

“Nope,” said Izzie. “This whole Olive thing has been a terrible blow.”

“Which he doesn't think the show will recover from?” I said.

“Don't take it personally, Rosie,” said Zelda. “You're doing a great job. It's just in two weeks' time he's gone from working with his
dream cast to losing three actresses. He was the same way when Ruby first joined us.” I'd so willingly bought into Ruby's claim that she was a legend in her own right that I was shocked to hear Friday was anything but thrilled when she stepped in.

“What do you think about all this?” I asked them. “Have you ever been in a show with so many…problems?”

“That's the euphemism of the year,” said Zelda. She lit a cigarette and stared at the end of it like she was surprised to find it on fire. “When Paulette was killed, it just seemed like rotten luck, but with Ruby getting sick and Olive getting hurt…”

“There's also been problems in the dance corps,” I said. “Both myself and another dancer slipped on something the other day, and in case you haven't noticed, we weren't the most impressive group of hoofers to begin with.”

Izzie's and Zelda's eyes met and they shared a smile. Of course they'd noticed. People two counties away had noticed.

“Do you think the show is being sabotaged?” I asked.

Zelda finally took a puff on the gasper. She closed her eyes as she inhaled, enjoying every noxious bit of smoke. “Sure it's possible, but why would someone do that?”

I shared Jayne's and my theory with them and gave them the lay where Vinnie Garvaggio was concerned. Neither was surprised that mob money was backing the production. Not only was Garvaggio the most obvious gangster either of them had ever encountered, but both had done enough Broadway shows to know that the money came from whoever was willing to provide it, no matter how dirty their hands were.

“Let's say you're right and Garvaggio's trying to shut down the show,” said Izzie. “What does that have to do with Paulette?”

“I'm not sure.” Killing someone wasn't sabotage. It was a last resort. Perhaps Paulette's death wasn't the first thing Garvaggio did to undermine the show but rather the catalyst for his decision to pull out of it?

I opened my sandwich and searched its contents for a sign of what
it consisted of. There was too much mayonnaise to tell me. “What do you guys know about this fellow who killed Paulette?”

“The papers said he was a thug,” said Zelda. “Probably a mobster like Garvaggio.” My stomach clenched. I didn't like Al being reduced to a stereotype, no matter how true it was.

“What do you mean the papers said? Didn't you ever meet him?”

Izzie shook her head. “First time we heard his name was after Paulette was dead.”

“So Paulette never mentioned him?”

“Of course not,” said Zelda. “Why would she?”

At least I had confirmation that Al was a big fat liar. “I heard she'd been dating him. That this was a relationship gone bad.”

“Where on earth did you hear that?” asked Izzie.

I decided it would be a bad idea to mention that I'd gotten it directly from the horse's mouth. “I can't remember, but at the time I thought it was credible.”

“Paulette was engaged,” said Zelda. “She wasn't the kind of girl to hook up with a trouble boy.”

I swallowed that insult. “What happened the night she was killed?”

“We had plans to go to the Stage Door Canteen and she bowed out at the last minute,” said Izzie.

“How come?”

“George was in town,” said Zelda.

Had I known that? I'd been under the impression that George didn't come to the city until after he found out about Paulette's death, but maybe that was an assumption on my part.

“That's right,” said Izzie. “Anyway, Olive was dog-tired and I had a headache something awful so Zelda told us to head home and that she'd take care of kitchen cleanup. What time was it, Zel?”

“I think you two left the Canteen around ten.”

“Olive and I came home and shared a bottle of something. We got to talking, and the next thing we know we hear Zelda come home. Anyway, we were all heading upstairs when Olive noticed that the
light was still on in the parlor. She called out to see if Paulette was in there. When she didn't answer, Zelda went in there to turn out the lights.”

“And that's when you found her?” I asked.

Zelda nodded, her eyes locked on her sandwich. “We had these lamps in there, with big porcelain bases, and one was shattered and its pieces were scattered around her body. It was obvious he'd hit her with it. She was all bruised and bloodied. I guess he knocked her out, then had a go at her. I could barely recognize her.”

“The police said she'd been there for at least three hours. The whole time Olive and I were in the kitchen, Paulette had been lying dead in the parlor,” said Izzie.

“You didn't know.” Zelda took Izzie's hand and squeezed it. “For all you knew, she was with George.”

“And what about him?” I asked. “What time did he leave?”

“I'm not sure,” said Zelda.

“Didn't you ask him?”

Zelda twisted her napkin until it began to tear. “He was so upset. We all were. There was no way he was involved in this. I didn't want to treat him like a suspect.”

“But the police did, right?”

They were silent for a beat. Izzie pushed her plate away and rested her crumpled napkin atop it. “The police never questioned him.”

“Why not?”

“There are rules at the Canteen,” said Zelda. “There's supposed to be no outside fraternizing. A girl can get her ticket revoked if she's seen with a soldier she danced with at the Canteen outside of the club.”

“Paulette's dead. It's hardly going to bother her if word gets out that she was dating someone she met at the Canteen.”

Neither of them responded, and I read the reasoning in their faces. It wouldn't bother Paulette, but it would bother them. If people found out Paulette was violating the rules, they might assume her friends were too, and if that were the case they might also lose their own Canteen privileges.

“So how did they connect Paulette to the guy they arrested?” I asked.

“He confessed,” said Izzie. “He showed up at the police station two days later and said he was the one who did it.”

The story was so different from what I'd imagined that I wasn't sure how to respond. I'd assumed Al had been picked up shortly after I'd seen him, not that I was his last stop on the way to him turning himself in. And that broken lamp. Why would he hit her with that? He was more than capable of overpowering her without knocking her out first.

“Were there fingerprints, anything that connected him to the crime?”

“He wore gloves,” said Zelda. “It was cold that night, so he must've never taken them off.”

I'd known Al for three months, all three in one of the coldest winters we'd ever had. In all that time I'd never once seen him wear a pair of gloves.

R
EHEARSAL ENDED AT FIVE
. Z
ELDA
and Izzie invited me to join them for dinner, but I was desperate to talk to Jayne and told them I'd take them up on their offer another time.

Jayne was already home when I arrived, nursing her feet in a bowl of hot water and Epsom salts. WMCA was on, rattling the headlines. The Germans had entered Kharkiv. The French were being encouraged to do whatever was necessary to prevent the Nazis from mobilizing workers for Reich factories. The State Department had unconfirmed reports that Hitler had suffered a complete nervous breakdown.

If only we could be so lucky.

“Did Maureen miss me?” I asked.

Jayne stretched her legs and momentarily lifted her blistered feet out of the water. “Believe it or not, I think she does. Your replacement made her realize that she should've been happy with what she had.”

“I already have a replacement?” I dumped my script on the bed and unpinned my hat.

“Yep. Her name's Gloria Abatrillo. And from what she told me during the break, this is her first time onstage.”

“Ouch. Where did Friday find her?”

“He didn't. Her boyfriend, Vinnie Garvaggio, thought now was the time for her to strut her stuff.” Churchill approached the bowl and bent as though he was going to drink from it. The salty foot stew was unappealing, and he sneezed and skulked away.

“Gesundheit. Poor Maureen.” At least that explained why Friday
had been willing to cast me in Olive's part. If he hadn't, who knows who Garvaggio might've stuck in the role.

“Poor me.” Jayne's voice walked the line between amusement and hysteria, teetering more toward the latter. “I've seen Great War vets with one leg who had more grace than she does. Maureen decided that the only way Gloria was going to learn is if we all took responsibility for her mistakes, so every time Gloria messed something up, the rest of us had to show her how it was supposed to be done. Only Gloria's not the sharpest tool in the shed, so she didn't pick things up after watching us do it once. Nope, we had to do it seven or eight times before she got it through her baby blues that we weren't just putting on a show for her entertainment.”

I stifled a chuckle. I knew when Jayne was willing to laugh at her predicament. This wasn't one of those times. “Need a drink?”

“Do you have to ask?”

I freed our contraband from the depths of the closet and set to mixing us martinis. “Why would Garvaggio do that?”

“Do what?”

“Get his girlfriend's hopes up by putting her in a show he wants to shut down?”

“Rosie.” Jayne tilted her head and smiled at me like I was the most precious idiot she'd ever had the good fortune to know. “Why does a man do anything? Garvaggio's married and he wants to make sure Gloria stays happy, or at least happy enough not to tell his wife what he's really doing every night from ten to twelve. I'm sure he offered her the part to sweeten the pot. And believe me: she's not going to put two and two together if he does manage to get it shut down.”

I passed her a drink and gave her the rundown on my lunchtime conversation with Zelda and Izzie. As I came to the end of my story, she slid her feet out of the bowl and on to an awaiting towel.

“That doesn't make sense,” she said. “Why would Al confess?”

“Beats me, though I certainly intend on asking him.”

Jayne rubbed her feet dry and slipped on a pair of socks. “I know you want to believe this makes him innocent, Rosie, but you have to
know that when a man owns up to a crime, especially a man who's been in the joint before, there's got to be a good reason for it.”

I plucked my olive from the glass. “Like he did it?”

“That would be one, sure.”

“I hear you.” I ate the olive and chased it with a little firewater. “But you've got to admit, George Pomeroy's behavior seems odd. He made it sound like he hadn't seen Paulette since the night they got engaged.”

“Grief makes people do funny things. You know that.”

I sat cross-legged on my bed. “And what about the way Tony's acting? He and his friends have all kinds of connections. They could've helped Al beat this by coming up with an alibi for him. There were no fingerprints and Paulette's friends had no idea who he was. Why confess? He could've gotten away with it free and clear.”

“Guilt?” asked Jayne.

“It seems to me that if your sense of guilt is that profound, you don't kill someone to begin with.” I sighed and burrowed my fingers into Churchill's back. He froze, uncertain whether to allow himself to enjoy this rare pleasure or to protect himself from what was surely going to turn into an attempt on his life. “I wonder if this Gloria might be of some use to us.”

“Sure, as long as we don't ask her to dance.”

Churchill relaxed and pushed against my hand. “You know stuff about Tony's business. Maybe she knows what Garvaggio is really up to.”

Jayne rolled her eyes. “I doubt she even knows there's a war on.”

Jayne had a way of assuming a dim bulb persona whenever it served her best, well aware that a big chest, short skirt, and coy smile went far toward getting a woman what she wanted. It was possible Gloria was the same way. “Still,” I said. “We should talk to her. If Vinnie thinks she's as dumb as you do, chances are he's not too careful about his business around her.”

Jayne sighed dramatically to let me know how very taxing this request was going to be. The idea of trying to make nice with someone you wouldn't talk to unless you wanted something instantly put me in mind of another dame I'd rather avoid.

“Have you seen Ruby?” I asked.

“Nope. I don't know if anyone has.”

An image flashed in my mind of Ruby lying incapacitated in her room, her past behavior making it unlikely that anyone—even Minnie—was checking on her. The vision should've cheered me, but I felt strangely responsible for her. I deposited my empty glass on the nightstand and disentangled myself from the cat. It was a sad day when I preferred Ruby's company to his. He was used to being the lesser of two evils. “I'm going to check on her. You want to come?”

Jayne stared at her swollen feet and silently debated the merits of walking on them between now and the next rehearsal. “Do you mind if I soak and sulk instead?”

“Not in the least.”

I left our room and knocked on Ruby's door. As I waited for her response, I prepared myself for whatever ghastly state her appearance had reached. No matter how bad it was, I wouldn't scream. Not until she'd turned away from me.

“Come in,” she said.

I opened the door and found myself unable to follow my pledge to conceal my emotions. I gasped and backed into the hallway.

Ruby stood directly in front of me in a mid-calf-length navy blue dress covered in fringe that was designed to come alive whenever the wearer stepped onto the dance floor. Her hair was in an elaborate updo that framed her face in a series of undulating curls so skillfully made that not a single hairpin showed. And her face—that face—was back to its previous grandeur, better in fact since she'd spent an hour applying Elizabeth Arden's latest line with a careful, studied hand.

“You look great,” I managed at last.

“Thanks.” For once, it didn't sound like arrogance. While she must've realized what a thorough job she'd done healing, I was the first person who was brave enough to bear witness to her transformation and confirm its success. “The medicine did its job and here I am: as good as new.”

“Are you coming back to rehearsal?”

“Of course. I haven't told Walter yet, or Minnie for that matter. I decided I'd make a grand entrance on Monday and shock them both.”

“I'm surprised Minnie hasn't been by to witness the miracle for herself.”

She opened a golden glass apple and removed a bottle of Apple Blossom perfume from inside of it. “She tried to come by, but I sent her away.”

“Why?”

She dabbed the scent behind each of her ears. “I got tired of her hovering.”

That was cold, even for Ruby. “I thought you two were bosom friends.”

More perfume scented her décolletage. “I felt sorry for her when she first moved in, but let's face it—she and I have nothing in common.”

I was eight beats behind and struggling to catch up to the music. “You mean aside from the fact that you're both actresses starring in the same show?”

She replaced the bottle in the apple. “I would hardly call her part a lead.”

So that's how it was: now that Ruby had a big part in a big show populated with people more like herself, she no longer needed Minnie.

I was having a hard time remembering why I had ever felt sorry for her.

“Where are you off to?” I asked.

She turned her back toward her dressing table mirror and surveyed the fringe at the rear of her dress. “I have a date with Captain Montgomery, no thanks to you people.”

“Come again?”

“Donald called here every day for the last week, and each time someone told him I was out. Fortunately, I was able to get to the phone before anyone else yesterday; otherwise who knows when I would've heard from him again.”

“Has it occurred to you that whoever answered actually thought you weren't home?”

“Please, Rosie. Everyone knew I was sick.”

That was true. The martyr wouldn't have dared let that knowledge slip past anyone at the house. “So where are you two lovebirds going?”

“He's taking me out for dinner and dancing.”

“Good for you.” I stepped farther into the room and perched on the edge of her pink-clad bed. “Did you hear about Olive?”

Of course she hadn't. Without Minnie stopping by, she had no way of knowing what had transpired the last few days. I filled her in on what had happened. To her credit, she seemed genuinely dismayed, not enough to muss her makeup or hair, but at least she momentarily turned her painted-on grin into a frown.

“So you've taken over for her?” she asked. I couldn't read her tone but decided she hadn't intended to imply that she was anything but thrilled that I'd be working with her.

“That's right. Anyway, I'm curious about something. An awful lot of accidents seem to be striking this production, and we can't discount that your illness might be among them. Do you have any idea why someone might want to shut this show down?”

“Not in the least.” Her patience was waning. I no longer rated a smile with teeth. “Do you need anything else, Rosie?”

“Nope,” I said. “Have a great date.”

 

Jayne was asleep when I returned to the room, her besocked feet elevated on a pillow, her mouth open and emitting a sound usually associated with drunken sailors. The radio had been switched to WEAF, where Saturday night dinner music was filling the airwaves. Her chest rose and fell to the rhythm of Dinah Shore singing “Blues in the Night.”

I didn't want to rouse her from her nap, so I refilled my drink, picked up a copy of
Detective Fiction Weekly,
and retreated to the radiator by the window, where the waning daylight was being supplemented by the neon blue hotel sign across the street. In this pale,
aqua hue I attempted to read, but my ability to concentrate was interrupted by activity taking place on the street below me. People meandered down the walk, vendors hawked tantalizing foods, and children pushed strollers and wagons teetering with books they'd been collecting for the Victory Book Drive. The gas ration had recently been eased, and a few vehicles made their way past the building, but for the most part traffic on the street was reduced to the hoofing variety. Well, that and the odd horse-drawn carriage that remained as a holdover from earlier times, when the only gas rationing people knew of was when the master of the house attempted to limit his wind at the dinner table.

The story I was trying to read was typical detective fiction fare: dame in distress isn't what she appears to be and the detective finds out—in the nick of time—that she's been playing him from the get-go. Because this was a pulp, the dame in question was gorgeous, with eyes like limpid pools (whatever that meant) and hair like corn silk (ditto). The moral was to always look beneath the surface. Or appearances aren't what they seem. Or don't trust good-looking women in tight red dresses. Maybe there was no moral, which was its own sort of moral.

A yellow pulled up to the curb in front of the Shaw House. The rear door creaked open and produced a man in air force dress blues. My breath caught momentarily in my throat, as it always did when I was confronted with someone in the military. They were striking, these men who so willingly went off to battle. Even when you knew them, the armed forces seemed to change them into another creature entirely. They were no longer boyfriends, fathers, or brothers; now they were soldiers.

This particular soldier (or pilot or whatever the various divisions preferred to be called) ducked his head back into the cab and gave the driver some sort of instruction. He emerged with a bouquet of flowers, slammed the back door closed, lifted his hat, smoothed his hair, and didn't so much walk into the Shaw House as skip up the stairs. It was charming and playful and would've made me melt if
Jimmy Stewart was doing it. As it was, I couldn't help but feel sad for the poor guy. This may be the last joy he ever felt. And not just because he was Ruby's date.

I couldn't help myself. I slid on my saddle shoes, dashed out the door, and arrived in the lobby just as he was entering it. Nobody else was down there, and so upon my arrival he had no choice but to speak to me.

“Good evening, ma'am.” He removed his hat and bowed his head in greeting. I'd been correct in my upstairs assessment. He was a handsome man.

“Good evening. Are you looking for Ruby?”

The bouquet of yellow roses hung awkwardly from his hand. He had no idea what do with them. “How did you know?”