Final Curtain: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) by Ed Ifkovic

Author:Ed Ifkovic [Ifkovic, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2014-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The desk clerk called to me as I headed into the breakfast room. “Miss Ferber, a package came for you this morning.” He handed me a rectangular box wrapped in wrinkled brown paper and tied with white string. I joined George at the corner table and as the waiter poured me coffee—with the whipped hot milk I requested—I tore open the package. An exquisite drawing in a burnished gold Victorian frame, the fully realized landscape that Dak had promised me. Finished now, and beautifully done: the result of his sensitive, intimate touch. A luminous work that reminded me of the Durand landscape Dak had pointed out to me. A woodland scene in lush summer. I fairly lost my breath. An accompanying note said, briefly, “Miss Ferber, as promised. Fondly, Dak.” The drawing was signed on the back: Dakota Roberts for Edna Ferber, Orange Mountain in Summer.

“I know where I’ll hang this.”

George smiled. “I’ll sell you the one he made for me, Edna. Then you’ll have a matching pair.” A lengthy pause while he lifted a coffee cup. “Oh, that’s right. I haven’t received mine yet.”

“I’m the one who believes in his innocence.”

“As do I.”

“I’m…looking into it.”

“And I’ve been your tagalong jester, Sancho Panza lurching uphill while you tilt madly at windmills.”

“Jealousy is an awful thing, George.”

“Edna, eat your breakfast. You have a long day. You need to hide the painting so I can’t steal it, attend a rehearsal under my direction, and catch a murderer. In that order.”

“It’s not funny, George. Evan is dead.”

His voice got small but with an edge. “Oh, I know, Edna. And I’m worried that you’ll blunder into something that will get you killed.”

“Nonsense.”

“I joke about everything, my dear, but I’m not joking about this.”

I touched Dak’s gift affectionately and tucked it back into the box.

“I have a busy day. I’ll be rushing back to the city after rehearsals, George. I need to meet with Doubleday, and I’m having dinner with Aleck.” Aleck Woollcott was a close friend who invited me to dinner after a brief business meeting with my publisher. Aleck Woollcott, bon vivant and critic, the inspiration for the popular drink, the brandy Alexander; and, unfortunately, the enormously rotund instigator of some of my most vitriolic and smoldering feuds. At the present time, however, we’d called a pax manahatta. The two of us were cut from the same piece of easily bruised cloth. Tonight’s dinner—a prelude to Aleck’s making the trek to Maplewood next week for my own final curtain—was to test the waters. Aleck could not wait to see a disaster. Or perhaps not. Lately, I’d practiced good behavior, cloyingly sweet with the café society legend, though sometimes it took all my strength to avoid the easy skirmish with the gloriously round Aleck.

“Are you going to behave yourself this time, Edna?” George grinned his ah-shucks Huck Finn grin.

“Why should I?” Then I smiled, too. “We’re friends this summer, Aleck and I. I’ve decided to have peace in our time. I have nothing on Chamberlain selling out Czechoslovakia.

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