Death Was the Other Woman Read online

  When I brought Brucie into the foyer, I noticed she paused and admired her surroundings. The old house is an aging beauty certainly, but a beauty nonetheless. To me, it smelled like home, the scent of beeswax mingling with the flowers Marjorie coaxed from her shady garden, wafting together through the house to the large oak-paneled hall.

  In many ways the big house hadn’t changed since my father was alive. Marjorie and Marcus kept things just as spotless as they had when the house hadn’t belonged to them. They hadn’t even moved from the servants’ quarters in the converted carriage house, preferring to rent the master suite and large guest bedrooms in the main house to the more affluent of their clientele. For all that, I couldn’t help but think that the house was warmer now than it had been, and certainly brighter. The constant comings and goings of a large handful of paying guests keeping the Olegs busy, and the heart of the house quickened with life. My father’s presence had been a dour one in many ways, but I hadn’t realized until he was gone that his presence had been like deep shade; no matter how bright the sun, there’d been a cold there that nothing could ever really touch.

  “Let’s go find Marjorie,” I said to Brucie, as I led her to the kitchen. At this time of the day, that’s where she’d be, preparing the evening meal for her boarders.

  When I introduced them, I could see Marjorie gently sizing Brucie up. “You’re all alone, Mrs. Jergens?” Marjorie asked politely, though she didn’t miss a beat in rolling out the biscuits for the evening meal.

  “Yes, ma’am, I am,” Brucie replied.

  “And your husband … ?” Marjorie let her question trail off, but I could see she wanted an answer. There were certain types of people she’d not let stay in the house. There was, she insisted, a very thin line between a boarding house that could expect the very best people and one where those same people would not stay. She said it was all a matter of reputation. Many of our boarders were gentlemen of business, some of whom had fallen on difficult times. Paying a little bit extra to live in our house was worthwhile to them. They could stay there and imagine—or pretend, if that was their wont—that their circumstances had not been reduced, just altered slightly. Marjorie felt that letting the wrong people stay could alter this perception. So she screened carefully.

  “I’m a widow, Mrs. Oleg,” Brucie said, her eyes downcast, as though carefully examining the tile floor. “My husband died a few weeks ago.”

  “A widow, Mrs. Jergens? How sad to see that, a woman of your age. And you’re all alone in the world?”

  “Not in the world, no. I have no family in the city. But friends. I do have friends.”

  “She’s one of Mustard’s friends, Marjorie. That’s how I came to know her.”

  Marjorie’s face stayed neutral at the mention of Mustard’s name. I knew that didn’t necessarily mean that Marjorie disapproved of him; it was more like the jury was still out.

  Brucie wouldn’t have seen Marjorie wrestling with her decision, but I, who knew the woman well, could see it as plain as anything. After all, for my entire life Marjorie had been like a mother to me. I saw her moving toward her decision, and I felt a little guilty. I didn’t know much about Brucie, but I realized that if Marjorie knew even the little I knew, her decision would have been much easier. Then I chided myself for the thought. I really didn’t know anything. I suspected that Brucie’s Ned had been some sort of mob type who had come to an unpleasant end, but no one had actually told me as much. It was possible I had it all wrong. It was possible that Chummy McGee was actually an accountant or a lawyer and Ned had been his assistant. But I didn’t think so.

  I knew Marjorie had come to some kind of decision when, with the biscuits ready for the oven, she washed her hands, then smoothed them against her housedress. When she spoke again, I knew I was right. “We’ll give her the big room across from yours, Miss Katherine.” And then to Brucie: “It’s got a nice view of downtown. Miss Elizabeth—Miss Katherine’s mother—liked to sit there with her books and read when she was expecting.” And so on, indoctrinating Brucie into the workings of the house almost without the girl’s knowing.

  “It’s fifty dollars a month,” Marjorie said quietly. “Can you manage that all right, dear?”

  Brucie nodded. “I can, thank you. That will be fine.”

  “That’s all settled then. Miss Katherine, I’m busy in the kitchen for the next little while. Will you show Mrs. Jergens to her room, please? Then both you girls come down for dinner in half an hour.”

  “She keeps calling you Miss Katherine,” Brucie said, as we climbed the stairs. “It’s like you still own the joint.” I’d told her a little about the history of the house on our walk from Angels Flight.

  “Hard habit to break, I guess. We get along all right though. Everything’s changed,” I said thoughtfully. “But in some ways it’s like nothing’s changed at all.”

  “Is that hard though? You know, Ned and I had a little house in Highland Park. I… well, I can’t be there now. But even if I could, I couldn’t, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t, but by then we’d come to her room. I unlocked the door and threw it open with a flourish, letting her enter before me.

  “Wow,” she said, spinning around in the center of the room, the wood floor slippery against the smooth soles of her shoes. “This pile may be old-fashioned, but the room is pretty swank.”

  I looked around, trying to see things through her eyes. And, yes, viewed in that light, the room was old-fashioned. As was, as she’d said, the whole pile. The cove ceilings, the clerestory windows, and the bare wood floors. But the house had a sort of genteel elegance, even with its aging bones. It had breeding in a way. And blood, as my father used to say, will tell.

  “Bathroom?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Down the hall on the left. But there’s one in my room. You can use that sometimes, if you like.”

  “What now?”

  “Well, you’re all set. Once Mustard gets here with your trunk, you can settle in. And Marjorie said dinner is in a while. Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat,” Brucie said.

  “Well, that’s fine then. By the time we’re done with dinner, Mustard will be here. Once you have your own things around you, you’ll feel more at home.” Brucie’s little face looked suddenly unguarded and terribly sad.

  “It’ll be all right,” I said softly. “It doesn’t seem like it now, I know. But it all gets easier. I promise.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BY THE TIME we went down for dinner, Brucie’s spirits had been miraculously restored, at least on the outside. She seemed to have that sort of personality. Resilient, I would have said on first meeting. Though there was something of the caged bird about her. Her wings might be clipped, and sometimes she might wish she were soaring, but you couldn’t suppress her gaiety for long. As a result, our meal was a jovial affair. You got the feeling that Brucie was one of those girls that people say light up a room. By the end of the meal, Marjorie was clucking over Brucie maternally, Marcus seemed delighted just to be in her company, and the various elegant old codgers that currently shared our roof all looked ready to rush out and lay capes over puddles for her. Brucie had that effect on people, and most charmingly, she didn’t even seem aware of it.

  As I had predicted, just as we’d finished clearing the dishes from our evening meal, we heard the front door knocker.

  “That’ll be Mustard with your stuff,” I said to Brucie, but she was already leaving the room.

  “Is it all right if I answer the door?” she called back over her shoulder.

  Marjorie and I nodded almost simultaneously. “Of course,” I said.

  I started to help with the washing-up, and after a while Brucie popped into the kitchen, Mustard in tow.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he greeted me. “Hello, Mrs. Oleg.”

  “Mustard has the most wonderful surprise,” Brucie enthused. “You’ll never guess.”

  “Ummm … probably not.” The world was too vast.
There were too many possible guesses. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “We’re going to the Zebra Room!”

  “We are?” I said. I knew I’d be going. I didn’t know yet how I felt about a whole group.

  Marjorie looked only slightly disapproving. I realized it was because she probably had no idea what a Zebra Room might be.

  “Dex came by to get a car,” Mustard explained. “I told him I was coming up here to see Brucie, and he sez, why don’t I just bring you two lovely ladies and we’ll meet him there?”

  I could feel the tiniest bit of glowering beginning from Marjorie, so I explained to her, “It’s not a date. It’s business. Dex is on a case, and he asked if I’d come along, kind of to help.”

  If Marjorie was mollified, she didn’t show it. “It’s not seemly, Miss Katherine.”

  I smiled at her reassuringly. “It’s a different age, Marjorie. It’ll be all right. I’m a big girl.”

  “Not that big,” Mustard offered up gallantly. “But I’ll be there to be sure she’s all right.”

  “I’m not sure that makes me feel any better,” Marjorie sniffed, as she left the room. But despite her words she did seem slightly reassured.

  “I told Dex this afternoon that I really haven’t anything to wear.”

  “Ha!” Brucie said unexpectedly. “Then you’re lucky I’m here, because I have lots.”

  Mustard had not only brought a large trunk, but several boxes as well.

  “Hats,” Brucie said, explaining the boxes. “Well, some hats, some shoes.”

  We showed Mustard where to haul Brucie’s stuff, then installed him in the drawing room with a glass of Marjorie’s medicinal Irish whiskey before tripping back upstairs.

  In her room, I discovered that Brucie hadn’t been exaggerating. It seemed to me there was little in that trunk beyond what was appropriate to be worn to places like the Zebra Room.

  We were not the same size. I was taller and more angular. Brucie was small, delicately made, and full-bodied. The basic differences in our shapes narrowed the possible clothing selection somewhat, but her wardrobe was so ample that several choices remained.

  At her insistence, we settled on something I would normally never have worn, never mind had access to. It’s not that it was particularly revealing; it wasn’t. But the ivory fabric draped me so closely, I felt unusually exposed. The dress fell to a point just between knee and calf that Brucie pronounced acceptable though not perfect.

  “Last year when I had the dress made,” Brucie explained, “the hemline was the perfect length. But this year, hemlines are a few inches lower, so this would be too long for me. You’re taller though, so it all sorta works out.”

  When I tried on the dress, she stood back and surveyed me critically. “You know, it’s funny. It looks so different on you than it did on me. It looks like a different dress altogether. But it looks good. Oh, wait though; there’s a hat.”

  Which set her back in motion, pulling open boxes within boxes, until she came across what she was looking for. It seemed so tiny to me, it could barely be called a hat; a wedge of shiny ivory fabric that she fixed on my head with a series of pins.

  Once she was finished, she stood back and surveyed me again. Finally she nodded approvingly. “You still need a little lip rouge and maybe something for your cheeks, but other than that you’ll do nicely.”

  She turned me so I faced the mirror on the back of the door. I gasped when I got a load of myself; the transformation was startling.

  “I look … I look grown up,” I said quietly.

  Brucie laughed at my comment, though not unkindly. “But not too grown up. No one wants to look like that.”

  It was a silly thought—that grown-up thing—but not one without reason. I’d been a schoolgirl, and then overnight, it seemed, I was a grown woman with responsibilities. There’d been little time for transitions involving coming-outs and balls. And now … well, now I was going to the Zebra Room with my boss and his friend. Hardly a coming-out. Still it was an exciting night for me. I felt I was on the threshold of something.

  “And this is what I need for the Zebra Room,” Brucie said, bringing out a gown that had been wrapped in tissue and stored carefully in the trunk. “You’ll see. The two of us will look like we were born for that place.”

  When she shook out the garment, I gasped. And I could understand her special care. The dress was gold lame—not a fabric I’d seen before—and the bodice was affixed with beads so tiny, all you saw was the shine.

  “It’s Mainbocher.” She breathed the name of a designer I’d never heard of before as though he were a religious icon. And then as though admitting something, she said, “OK, well it’s not Mainbocher. But it’s from a Mainbocher design. And I don’t think anyone could tell that it wasn’t, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, princess,” she said, when she was dressed and had fussed appropriately over our hair and makeup, “we’re set then. Let’s have Mustard get our chariot ready.”

  And the funny thing was, in that moment I did feel like a princess. I felt like anything was possible. And I won’t forget the night. Not ever. Though it ended so badly, in its infancy it was an evening that seemed made for magic.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE ZEBRA ROOM astonished me. It was like nothing I could ever have imagined.

  The Town House Hotel had opened just a year before. Bad timing, really. It had been designed and launched with a different era in mind. One of opulence and excess. One where affluence was inevitable and assured.

  In the twenties the stock market had been unstoppable. People were even borrowing money in order to invest in the market. Everyone knew it would just keep going on like that— up, up, and ever up. I was very young, but you couldn’t miss the optimism, even the arrogance. This is the way things would always be, the future an unbroken ribbon of glistening promise.

  The only thing necessary in such a market had been venues of excess where people could go to unload some of their easily gained cash. With all of that in mind, the Town House Hotel on Wilshire had opened its doors. It boasted fourteen floors of elegant opulence and the first—the only—indoor Olympic-sized swimming pool anywhere in the Southland. It had restaurants and shops and services galore. And it had the Zebra Room, a club where Zelda and F. Scott would have felt right at home.

  Based on the name alone, I’d expected a black-and-white decor. I was wrong but not disappointed. The club was done in browns and creams and whites with only accents of black. It managed to pull off elegance and whimsy all in one bite, and against this color scheme I could see why Brucie had thought we were perfectly dressed for the club. With me in ivory and Brucie in her gold lame, we might have been created by the Zebra Room’s interior designers as a foil for the decor of the glamorous room.

  Truly, though, I wasn’t certain anyone would notice us. When we got there at ten o’clock, the club was filled to the rafters with people and noise and music and an air of such extreme frivolity, it seemed to me almost like a dream of what such a place would be. It was everything I’d imagined. More. The club seemed full of men in smart suits and beautiful women in dresses of every conceivable hue. The place looked full and rich and right. It made you think that maybe the Times was right; maybe there really was no Depression going on, not here. How could there be? Not in L.A.

  When we entered the club, Mustard insisted Brucie and I each take an arm, though if this was for his sake or ours, I wasn’t quite sure. He escorted us right into the center of the partying throng, where Brucie and I fell in behind him like small ships in the wake of a larger one. From there Mustard led us through the crowded room, ever more deeply into the club. I could tell he had a destination in mind.

  I noticed that sometimes he gently elbowed members of the crowd aside. More often, people would notice him first and get out of his way as though he were Moses and they were the Red Sea. I wondered if it had to do with his reputation or the expression on his face. After a bit
more observation I decided it was probably some of both.

  “Is this a special night?” I said, moving close to Brucie’s ear so she could hear me over the din.

  “Whadja mean?” she asked.

  “All these people. It looks like New Year’s Eve or something.”

  “Or something,” Brucie laughed. “At the Zebra Room, it’s New Year’s Eve every night.”

  I took this in but didn’t say anything, intent on keeping Mustard’s back in sight. He didn’t slow his pace until he found what he’d been looking for: Dex had commandeered a banquette near the back of the room and was waiting for us.

  “Get a load of you,” he said, when he saw me. He had some dark cocktail on the table in front of him, though I wasn’t surprised he’d gotten a head start.

  “Yeah, our girl cleans up pretty good, don’t she?” Mustard said, nodding approvingly.

  He introduced Brucie, and I thought maybe Dex looked at her appraisingly when he heard her name, his eyes widening slightly, but I might have been imagining things.

  The three of them chatted a bit over the din. We were close to the piano player, who was tinkling away madly while a canary in a bright pink evening gown belted out “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” and other things by Cole Porter and the Gershwins. I tried to focus a bit on the conversation, but was overwhelmed by my surroundings. The sights, the sounds, the colors, the scores of people all bent on hilarity. All of it outside my experience and deeply interesting.

  After a while, a waitress appeared at our table to take our order. Mustard asked for a manhattan, and though he already had a drink in front of him, Dex ordered one as well. Brucie asked for a silver fizz. When it came to be my turn, I had no idea what to ask for. Brucie saw this and came to my rescue.