This Dame for Hire (26 page)

“When we’ve finished, I think I can arrange for you to have access.”

I knew this could take forever.

“That’s nice of you, John.”

“Johnny.”

“Johnny. Maybe ya could mention to your guys to also be on the lookout for anything that links Garfield to Claudette West.”

“I’ve already told them that.”

I smiled. “Thanks.” I didn’t want to hang up, but I was clean outta Garfield questions.

“Now that I have you, I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner sometime. We can discuss the case.”

“Well, yeah, sure. That’d be nice.”

“Great. I’ll call you.”

“Swell.”

We said goodbye. I felt depressed. How come he didn’t ask me right then for dinner? I knew I shouldn’t be complaining. He brought up the subject of a date. At least I thought it was a date. But maybe not. He did say we’d discuss the case. Course that could be an excuse. Maybe he was too shy to ask me outright? I wished girls could ask men out. If I was a man and saw a girl I liked, I’d just ask. Oh, the hell with it.

Maybe if I went to some of the established theater companies and asked, someone might be able to point me . . . and then I thought of it. Claudette’s things. I was sure the Wests hadn’t thrown anything away. Claudette might’ve kept a playbill.

I decided not to let the Wests know I was coming. I went into the outer office.

“How long ya goin out for, Faye?”

“I’m not sure. What’s with you?”

“Meanin?”

“Ya look like ya swallowed a robin.”

“Canary.”

“I know. So what’s up?”

“My Marine called me.”

“No kiddin?”

“No kiddin.”

“Ya gonna see him again?”

“Tonight.”

“Well, that’s swell, Birdie.”

“Yeah. Pete can eat worms.”

For now, I thought. What happens when her Marine goes overseas? But I didn’t want to put the kibosh on it. “Good riddance.”

“Yeah. Sergeant Rory Tracy is my kinda guy.”

“Don’t get too carried away, Bird.”

“Nah. Don’t worry. We’re not gonna run away and get hitched or anything like that.”

That never entered my mind. “Good thing. I need ya here. I gotta go now.”

“Call in once in a while, will ya?”

“Right.”

Captain Cornell Walker was the only member of the West household at home. When we were settled in the living room and he’d gotten the maid to bring us coffee and biscuits, he finally asked the reason for my visit.

“I don’t think you’ll be able to help me, Captain. That’s what I was sayin at the door.” Before ya steamrolled me in here, I wanted to add.

“Well, try me, Miss Quick.”

“I need to know what plays Claudette saw in the last, let’s say, six months of her life.”

“I can name some of them.”

“How’s that?”

He smiled, but his blue eyes didn’t have a twinkle in them.

“I took her to a few.”

“Was one of them
Moonbeams and Mulberries
?”

“No. That sounds dreadful.”

“Yeah, it does.” I figured that wasn’t the only play this group ever did. “So what were the titles of the plays you took her to see?”

“Let’s see. We saw
Blithe Spirit
and
The Eve of Saint Mark
and—”

“No offense, Captain, but those are Broadway shows, aren’t they?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I was thinkin more along the lines of small theater companies, produced downtown, maybe.”

He looked like he was smelling a dead mouse. “No, that wouldn’t interest me, and I’d never take my niece to something like that.”

He acted like I was talking about burlesque. “What if I told ya she hung around with actors and actresses from one of those groups?”

“I’d wonder where you got such information.”

I ignored this. “I was hopin maybe I could look through some of Claudette’s papers, keepsakes, a scrapbook if she had one, that might turn up a lead to the group I’m tryin to find.”

He stood up. “I certainly can’t allow that, Miss Quick.”

“Yeah. I guess not.” But I made no move to get up or leave. “When will Mrs. West be home?”

“I don’t know.” He sat down again. “Why repeat rumors to Myrna about Claudette associating with theater people? You’d only distress her.”

“What’ve you got against theater people?”

“Nothing. We just have different . . . our worlds are poles apart, Miss Quick.”

“Ya don’t get murdered too often either, I bet.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothin. You mind if I wait for Mrs. West?”

“I was on my way out.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need to be entertained.”

“It’s not that. Well, I can hardly leave you here alone, can I?”

“Ah, don’t think a thing of it. I’ll be fine right here. I’ll read my book. See?” I held up my copy of
Valley of Decision.
“I never go anywhere without a book just in case somethin like this happens.”

“You’re being difficult, Miss Quick.” He started talking to me like he was my father.

“I don’t mean to be difficult, it’s just that your brother-in-law is payin me to work on this case and that’s what I’m tryin to do.”

“I simply can’t leave you in the house alone.”

“Yer afraid I’ll go snoopin, aren’t ya?” I tried to make my eyes sparkle, but I wasn’t any good at it.

“I thought no such thing.”

This bozo was turning out to be a stiff. Then I remembered what Gladys had said about him. Boring.

“Still, Miss Quick, I—”

We heard the door open, then footsteps. “Cornell? Are you home?”

“In here, Myrna.” To me he said, “I guess that solves the problem.”

“Yeah, guess it does.”

She came in with a twirl although her suit skirt didn’t budge. “How do you like it?”

Cornell looked embarrassed. So did Myrna when she realized I was there.

“Oh, Miss Quick. I didn’t know . . . I wasn’t expecting . . .”

“I like it, Mrs. West.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your suit. I like it.” It was royal blue, the jacket boxy with its padded shoulders.

“Thank you.” She’d pulled herself together. “Well, I don’t want to interrupt your little chat.”

“We were finished, Mrs. West. The captain helped as much as he could, but it’s you I need now.”

She exchanged a look with Walker that I couldn’t pin down. “What can I do for you?”

I told her I needed to look through her daughter’s mementoes. And her face fell.

“I’m not sure I can bear to do that.”

“If you just lead me to them, I can do it myself.”

Walker said, “That would be out of the question.” When Porter wasn’t around, he had no trouble taking the lead. He went to his half sister and put a protective arm around her.

“It’s all right, Cornell. Perhaps you could go in the room with her.”

I didn’t like that idea at all. I had a feeling Walker would interfere somehow.

“Before we look at anything let me ask you somethin, Mrs. West.”

“Yes?”

“You ever hear of a play called
Moonbeams and Mulberries
?”

“Awful title. But it seems familiar. Yes, I think Claudette went to see that play. She said she knew someone in it. Not well, of course. A cousin of a cousin of a friend or something like that.”

I didn’t want to get too excited. “A small actin company put it on, I think.”

“Yes. They were down in Greenwich Village. Near her school. Oh, I begged her not to go to that place. I knew it meant mingling with those ragtag people all the time. Why couldn’t she go to Bennington or Radcliffe? None of this would have ever happened if she hadn’t insisted. She never would have met that horrible boy.”

She dropped into a chair, exhausted. It was more than I’d heard her say in all the times I’d seen her.

She waved a hand in front of her face. “I’m sorry.”

“Perfectly okay, Mrs. West.”

“What was it you wanted to know?”

“The name of the actin group that put on that play, if you remember.”

“How could I forget? HeartsinArts. All one word.”

TWENTY-NINE

When I left the West apartment, I made my way over to Seventh Avenue, where I knew I’d find a phone booth with a directory. I didn’t have high hopes that the acting company would be listed, but it was worth a try.

I stood in the booth and opened the phone directory to the
H
’s, ran my finger down the pages but there was nothing. The best thing for me to do was to get back downtown and start asking questions.

I hopped a subway. I laughed to myself at the way Myrna West viewed the Village.
Ragtag people,
she’d said. Did she think I lived in my office? Course not. She didn’t think about where I lived at all. I didn’t register with her as a person who had a life of my own. I was a worker performing a job. One who might solve the murder of her daughter. That’s all she saw. And that was on the beam.

I was in my own backyard in ten minutes and knew exactly where to start, and probably finish, now that I had the name of the group. At the intersection of Seventh, Christopher, and West Fourth there was a triangle of a store named Village Cigars. It was sorta like Stork’s but smaller cause of its odd shape. And there was no poker game going on in a back room that I was wise to. I knew Nick Jaffe, the owner, cause that’s where I bought my cigs downtown.

He had one customer who left as I went in. Jaffe was behind the counter.

“Pack a Camels coming right up, little lady.”

“Thanks, Nick.” I didn’t need a pack but I would tomorrow so why not buy one today? Grease the wheels, like they say. We made our transaction, and I slipped the pack into my handbag.

Nick was about sixty, and he wore a cap with a narrow brim. Most people thought it was cause he was Jewish, but I knew it was cause he was going bald. I wasn’t a detective for nothing.

Jaffe had had a cig in his mouth since Hector was a pup, leaving one brown eye always closed, the smoke going up and past it.

“How you doing today?”

“Just fine.”

“You got a fella yet?”

My mind went directly to Lake and hurried back again. “Not yet, Nick.”

“Well, with the war it’s a sum of a gun to find somebody kosher. Ya know what’s going on?” As usual he motioned for me to come closer. Nick always had news, and sometimes it sounded straight and other times crazy. I leaned across the counter so he could reach my ear.

“They’re taking the Jews and gassing them. Then burning them up.”

“Oh, come on, Nick. Who is?” This was one of the crazy ones.

“Them Nazis . . . all over Europe.”

“Who told ya that?”

“I ain’t gonna reveal my sources . . . any more than you would. But it’s on the level. I know it here.” He thumped his heart with his fist, which started him hacking. But the cig never moved.

“If it’s true, why isn’t anybody puttin a stop to it?”

He shrugged. “Why? Why anything?”

I needed to cut this short, so I moved back and hit him with my question. “Nick, I need to know somethin, and I think yer probably the only one who can give me the skinny on this.”

“Yeah?” He didn’t light up like I thought he would. He looked sad, thinking about what he’d told me, I guessed. I wished people wouldn’t tell him these stories.

“I’m lookin for an actin group, the name of HeartsinArts. Ya know where they meet?”

“Sure I know. Nice kids. Nice but they should get jobs. A few
faygelehs,
but some of the boys has gone in the army, like a lot of my customers.” He shook his head in despair. “I’m glad they don’t draft girls, Faye.”

“Me, too. Where does this group put on their plays, Nick?”

“They’re over on Perry Street near Hudson. I don’t know the exact address, but that’s where they are.”

“Thanks. Ya just made my life a lot easier. Take care of yourself, okay.”

As I started to leave Nick yelled after me, “Tell people, Faye.”

“Tell people what?”

“What I told ya.”

“About the gas and the burnin?”

“Yeah. Ya never know, it gets around somebody might do a mitzvah.”

“Okay, Nick. I will.” I hated lying to him, but if I told that to anyone they’d think I was loose in the upper story. I gave him a wave and headed west down Christopher.

In five minutes I was where Perry met Hudson. Being it was such a nice day, a few people were sitting on stoops. I picked out a gal, maybe in her forties, who looked friendly.

“Excuse me.”

“Yes?”

“I wonder if you’d be so kind as to respond to an inquiry?”

“Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what?”

“ ‘Be so kind?’ ‘Inquiry?’ ”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Everything. How about,
Could I ask you a question?
”

“I was just tryin to be polite.” What a pain in the neck.

“Well, don’t try so hard. Be natural. Take a deep breath.”

“I’m not in the market for breathin lessons.”

“In, out. Go on, do it.”

“Lady, I don’t mean to be rude, but I just wanna ask ya a question.”

“I’m trying to get you to relax.”

“I’m already relaxed.
Yer
makin me nervous.”

“If you were relaxed, nobody could make you nervous. In, out.” She demonstrated.

I was about to move on when she said, “So what do you want to ask me?”

“Have you ever heard of an actin group called HeartsinArts?”

She looked at me funny for a sec, then burst out laughing.

“Heard of it? Honey, you’re looking at it.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s my troupe. I run the group, such as it is.” She stuck out her hand. “Dinah Dumont. Who are you?”

I took her hand. “Faye Quick.”

“Nice to meet you, Faye Quick. That your stage name?”

“I’m not an actress.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“I’m a private investigator, and the group came up in a case I’m workin on.”

She burst out laughing again. I waited until she stopped falling all over herself. By that time the other stoop sitters were all staring at us.

“Come on, honey, you rehearsing a role?”

“No. I’m tellin ya the truth. I’m a PI.”

“What’s the name of the play?”