Whistle Past the Graveyard [= Give the Girl a Gun]

Chapter Thirteen

An angry flush suffused Bubbles’s doll-like face. As she started to open her mouth, I said rapidly, “I’ll order you another drink.”

“No!” Bubbles said decisively. “She put it there on purpose. I’m not going to let that jealous female think she can get a rise out of me.”

Lifting the martini glass, she leaned over and emptied it into a vase of flowers bracketed to the pillar against which our table set. Removing the olive from the toothpick, she dropped that in also and returned the toothpick to the glass.

Holding my own drink up to the light, I examined it carefully, but could detect nothing floating in it except ice. Needing a drink to settle my nerves, I drained the glass.

A few moments later a bus boy deposited a tray of covered dishes on a nearby stand. Fausta, following behind him, nodded in signal that she would take over the serving and stopped before our table.

Eyeing Bubbles’s empty glass, she asked, “Was the cocktail all right, Miss Duval?”

“Delicious,” Bubbles said in a condescending tone.

Fausta blinked once, the only evidence of surprise she gave, then turned to the tray and began transferring dishes to our table.

As usual the spaghetti was magnificent, but by now I was in no mood to appreciate it fully. Bubbles seemed to enjoy hers, however, falling to with a gusto surprising in a girl who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds.

During dinner I steered the conversation back to Walter Ford, but without learning a great deal more than I already knew about him. Not that Bubbles wasn’t entirely willing to talk. The trouble was that she seemed to know remarkably little about the man. For instance, she seemed genuinely surprised to learn he had been married, though the knowledge didn’t seem to upset her. She showed no particular concern when I told her Mrs. Ford had evidence, through a private detective, that Bubbles was one of the women Ford had been seeing.

“She can’t name me as co-respondent in a divorce suit against a dead man,” she said philosophically. “Walter and I were only casual friends anyway. He made a big play for me at first, but he had a wandering eye. And I didn’t care enough about him to bother. I knew he was beginning to pant after Evelyn Karnes. You couldn’t miss it when they were in the same party. Walt was all right as a man to go out with now and then, but I wasn’t wasting any serious time on him. He spent money when we went out, but it stopped there. The only gift he ever gave me was that silly gun.”

“Bubbles, I understand you were on that trip last November when Lloyd Strong was killed. How did the shooting happen?”

“I wasn’t there,” she said. “I stayed back at base camp in the cabin. I think that was the day I painted my toenails.” She thought a moment, then said, “Yes, I’m sure it was. I must have been painting them just about the time Lloyd was killed. I didn’t know anything about it until hours afterward, of course, because the others went into town with the body and didn’t get back to camp until that night. I went to the inquest the next day though. The coroner decided it was an accident and told us to go home.”

“And was it?” I asked.

She looked at me wide-eyed. “Of course. You don’t think Madeline shot her own brother on purpose, do you?”

By now we had both finished the entree, and my reply was interrupted by Fausta reappearing to take our orders for dessert.

When Fausta had moved off again and I had poured coffee for both of us, I said, “I understood there was some question as to whose bullet hit Lloyd.”

Bubbles shrugged. “Oh, that. Barney was just being gallant. He told me and Tom Henry privately he was sure his shot wasn’t high enough to have reached Lloyd.”

I asked her how long Barney Amhurst and Madeline Strong had known Walter Ford.

“For years in a casual sort of way, I guess. I only met him about six weeks ago myself, but from remarks I’ve heard Barney and Madeline make, he was an old acquaintance of theirs. I suppose Lloyd must have known him too, though I never heard him mention Walter. I don’t know how Walt got involved with the Gimmick, but I’m pretty sure Barney and Madeline weren’t close friends of his until he became one of the company directors. You knew it was Walt who introduced Ed Friday to Barney and got him to put up the money for manufacturing, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said.

“Well, it was. Walt worked for Friday once about ten years ago.” She stirred her coffee thoughtfully. “You know, it’s funny I happened to know that, but didn’t know Walt was married. I guess he wasn’t in the habit of letting drop much information about himself.”

“He had a good reason. Did you know he had an interesting little sideline of blackmailing women with pornographic photographs of them that he had taken?”

She stopped her coffee cup halfway to her lips and slowly set it down again. An expression of startlement grew in her eyes, but for some odd reason I got the impression she was deliberately forcing it, and if she was actually surprised, her surprise stemmed more from my having knowledge that Ford had been a blackmailer than it did from the dead man’s nefarious activities.

“Walt did?” she asked with patently false amazement.

“Among other shady activities,” I said dryly. “His wife characterized him as ft liar, a crook and a blackmailer. She also said he didn’t pay his alimony.”

Fausta brought our dessert then, again interrupting the conversation.

“Was the spaghetti sauce all right?” she asked. “Wonderful,” I said in a flat voice. She didn’t reappear again.

On the way out of the club I stopped to talk to Mouldy Greene while Bubbles visited the powder room. Mouldy was in typical form. Just as I stopped, a famous but aging matinée idol who was reputed to wear a toupee entered the club. Mouldy’s face split into the terrifying expression he fondly believes is a smile of welcome.

“Hi, baldy,” he called. The famous stage lover winced, gave a hopeless shrug and called back equably, “Evening, Mouldy.”

Then El Patio’s official customer-greeter turned to me. “Still in one piece, huh?”

“I have a few inner scars,” I said. “Where’s your delectable boss?”

“Over there a minute ago.”

He pointed toward the archway into the ballroom, and I saw Fausta standing unobtrusively to one side of it looking toward us. When I crooked a finger at her, she came over reluctantly.

“For a grown woman that was a pretty childish idea,” I said to her.

Across the cocktail lounge I saw Bubbles emerge from the powder room. Giving Fausta a cold look, I started to walk away.

“Wait, Manny!” Fausta called. “Are you mad at me?”

Stopping, I said over my shoulder, “Enraged.”

Moving up beside me, she looked up into my face and said in a small voice, “Now you will stand me up tomorrow night.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I told her. “I’d probably get a bomb in the mail.”

“You will be here?” she said, pleased. “I will make it up, Manny. I will be awful good and not even frown when you smile at other women.”

“I’m sure of it,” I said dryly.

In a burst of generosity she said, “Why do not you and Bubbles go into the ballroom as guests of the house instead of leaving now? The first floor show will be soon.”

But having watched all the performance I cared to for one evening, I politely declined the invitation.