A Friendly Game of Murder (9 page)

“How long will it take to get permission?”

“Perhaps by morning, as I said before. Or perhaps later in the day. The city government is officially closed on New Year’s Day, so it could even be the day after.”

“Of course we wouldn’t want to disturb anyone’s day off, would we?” Dorothy said sarcastically.
Then again,
she thought,
Bibi’s not going anywhere
. “But what about the elderly man with apoplexy? Will you send an ambulance for him?”

“No,” Church said simply. “Dr. Norris said to keep him stable. Very little else can be done for him right now, no matter whether he is in a hospital bed or in a movie star’s bed.”

“Eh, between you and me, very little could be done for him even before the stroke. I guess doing nothing will have to do for now.”

Church hastily ended the conversation. “Thank you for reporting this matter, Mrs. Parker. I will call the hotel if I have any news. I trust you will do the same for me.”

“I’ll shout it from the rooftops.”

The line went dead, and the tiny red light went on. Dorothy unplugged the cord, as Mavis had told her to do. The light went off.

“Well?” Woollcott stood at the door impatiently.

“He told me to keep Bibi’s body cold. To surround her in a bed of ice.”

“But what about me?” Woollcott asked petulantly. “What did he want me to do?”

“Go jump in a lake.”

Chapter 12

“P
ut her on ice?” Frank Case asked, incredulous. Dorothy and Case stood in the parlor in Fairbanks’ penthouse.

“That’s what the police captain said. It’ll preserve her until the Health Department says the police are allowed into the hotel.”

“Forget it,” Fairbanks called from the bedroom doorway. “There’s no ice in the whole hotel. We ran out even before the party was over.”

“Oh dear. Perhaps you’re right,” Case said. “Chef Jacques told me we were running low earlier in the evening . . . and with all the drinking that’s been going on tonight . . .”

“Maybe we can borrow a block from someone’s icebox?” Benchley asked. He was in the bedroom helping Doyle and Jordan lift Dr. Hurst into a rickety old wooden wheelchair.

Case eyed the wheelchair. “I have a better idea.”

* * *

“This is a terrible idea,” Benchley said sourly.

What had gotten into him? Dorothy decided to take an approach she rarely took with Benchley. The direct approach. “What has gotten into you? You were so lovely earlier. What has made you so cross now?”

“Well, Mrs. Parker”—his voice was artificially merry—“we’ve been dragooned into pushing a dead, naked woman in a wheelchair to take her to the walk-in freezer in the hotel’s spooky cellar in the middle of the night. What could I possibly find objectionable about that?”

With a wave of his hand, he took in the grim little service elevator and Bibi’s dead body in the wobbly wooden wheelchair in front of them.

Dorothy sighed to herself. This errand was her fault. When the idea had popped into Frank Case’s mind, he turned to Dorothy and asked her to do it. His reasoning was simple. It was too sensitive a task to request an employee to handle, and furthermore Dorothy owed at least two months’ rent, a repeated habit to which Case always turned a blind eye. And when he subtly reminded her about it, she couldn’t help but agree to his plan.

But was that what Benchley was really angry about? Was he indeed jealous, as she had wondered earlier? Did he treasure her so much that it would throw him into such an unusual fit? That actually made her feel good—that he would be so emotional about her, so jealous for her time and attention.

Then she thought of something else. Perhaps it had nothing to do with her at all. Benchley had a wife and children at home in the suburbs. Maybe he wanted to be home with them, not trapped in this hotel with her? And if so, was he now taking out his anger on her?

She had begged him to be sure to come to the party, and look what she had gotten him into. After feeling so cherished just a moment before, she now felt low, lower than low. Nearly worthless.

She looked at the woman’s body covered in a bedsheet. Well, at least she wasn’t dead like Bibi. She could be thankful for that.

But realizing this didn’t make her feel any better. It actually made her feel worse.
Is that what my life has come to? To be relieved simply for not being a trampy dead starlet who’s about to be shoved into a hotel freezer? Is that the best I can hope for?

The elevator stopped at the subbasement level. She reached over the body and opened the elevator door. “Come on. Let’s just put this gal on ice and be done with it.”

Compared to the hotel above, the subbasement was like another world. Somewhere up there right now, Woollcott was probably pestering Lydia for answers. Down here it was airless and dark, lit by bare lightbulbs spaced far apart, with gaps of darkness in between. The floor was poorly patched concrete, dingy and dusty, causing the wheelchair to veer off unexpectedly. Wires and pipes ran overhead, creaking and clanging with steam. Narrow, dark corridors twisted off into even darker tunnels leading to who knew where.

Neither Dorothy nor Benchley had ever been in the subbasement before. Frank Case had given them directions, so they were unlikely to get lost—at least she hoped not. At the end of this corridor, they were to turn left. They did so, and as predicted, there was the thick metal door to the freezer room. The heavy door was dull metal, battered and scratched, but solid with no window.

Benchley parked the wheelchair, and Bibi’s body rocked to a stop. He moved forward and grabbed the long handle to unlatch the door. It pulled open with a shrill metallic shriek.

“Ouch,” Benchley said, wincing. “That was noisy enough to wake the dead.”

They both turned around to look at the body in the sheet. It did not move.

The freezer room was about the size of a walk-in closet, and was nearly full with boxes and crates of food. Icicles the size of daggers hung from the ceiling.

He sighed. “We’ll have to move and stack up some boxes to fit Bibi and the wheelchair inside.”

Leaving the body in the corridor, Dorothy and Benchley silently entered the freezer. Even in a long-sleeved velvet dress, Dorothy felt uncomfortably chilly. She picked up a big cylindrical carton marked
Pistachio Ice Cream
and lifted it against the wall on top of another box, but her hands nearly stuck to it when she tried to let go.

“Ouch,” she said, and breathed on her palms to warm them. Her breath came out in puffs of vapor, as though she was blowing smoke.

“Here.” Benchley took off his suit jacket. “This will keep you from freezing to death. Put your hands inside the sleeves so you can use them like mittens.”

Gratefully, she took his jacket. She could still feel the warmth of his body as she put it on. But, regrettably, the warm feeling quickly went away. She nodded her thanks and picked up another box.

How poetic,
she thought.
And how prosaic. The feelings between us keep changing from chilly to warm, then hot to icy. It’s a wonder I don’t catch a cold from all the ups and downs
.

Working together, they managed to move a number of boxes out of the way. Soon they had cleared an area large enough to fit Bibi and the wheelchair.

“That’s enough,” Dorothy said. “Let’s roll her in and be done with it.”

Just as they turned to leave the freezer, the sound of screeching metal startled them and stopped them where they stood. Just as surprising, the door quickly swung closed. They jumped forward, racing toward the shrinking gap of light. But the door slammed tight, leaving them in icy, absolute darkness. Dorothy pounded on the cold metal door with her fists.

There was a handle somewhere on the inside; Dorothy had seen it. She searched for it with her hands in the sleeves of Benchley’s jacket and found it. As she did, a loud, violent clang came from the other side of the door, and the handle vibrated painfully in her grip. Reflexively, she pulled her hand away—but the handle came with it. A small circle of light shone through where the handle had just been. Had someone just broken apart the door handle from the outside? She threw the useless piece of metal to the hard floor. She bent down and peeked through the hole.

There was movement. Rough, dark fabric. A pair of trousers! Then nothing. She could see the stone wall opposite, and just a sliver of the bedsheet that covered Bibi. Then the bedsheet disappeared, and Dorothy heard the creak of the wheelchair as it moved away.

“Oh brother,” she said, her heart in her throat. “Some guy locked us in here. And now he’s taking Bibi with him!”

“That’s funny,” Benchley said. “Bibi’s supposed to be the one in cold storage, but now she’s making a hot getaway.”

Well,
Dorothy thought,
at least Benchley has recovered his sense of humor
.

Chapter 13

“W
e have to get out of here,” Dorothy heard herself saying. “We’ll freeze to death!”

She was stating the obvious. It was extremely cold and dark, and she felt a shudder of panic begin to creep up her spine.

“Do you have any matches?” Benchley asked. “Maybe we could light a fire on one of these cartons.”

“No, I don’t have any matches. I expect a man to light my cigarettes. Do you?”

“No, I usually just light my own cigarettes—or my pipe, as the case may be.”

“I meant,” she said patiently, “do you have any matches?”

“Why, yes! Look in my jacket pocket.”

She searched through the pockets of his jacket, pulled out a matchbox and handed it to him. “You do it.”

He struck a match, and his amiable face was visible in the seemingly warm glow of the flame. He brought the match to the edge of a cardboard carton. It soon went out before it could catch fire.

“Well, so much for that,” he said. “Must be too icy in here.”

“Reach up and break off one of those icicles, would you please?”

She heard him make a small grunt, and then she heard the crack of breaking ice.

“Here you are, one icicle. That’ll be twenty-five cents, please, miss.”

“Put it on my tab,” she said.

“Mrs. Parker, what do you intend to do with that sharp, slender icicle, if I may inquire?”

“You may. I intend to stick it into the latch hole. Perhaps I can use it to somehow pry open the latch or even the door itself.”

Aiming at the small circle of light, she thrust the point of the icicle into it. Taking care not to break the icicle, she tried to turn it as though turning a doorknob. But it was too slippery. She tried to push it forward, perhaps to pressure open the latch mechanism. But the icicle didn’t seem to affect the mechanism at all. Finally she tried to put sideways pressure on it, as if to free the door from whatever hasp that locked it. But the icicle only snapped apart in her hands.

“Well, you tried,” Benchley said. “It’s the thought that counts.”

“I think I’m f-freezing.” She clutched her arms around herself. “Oh, and now I’m st-stuttering!”

Then she felt him reach out to her, wrap his arms around her and hold her close to his body. She knew he was doing it to keep them both warm, and, not caring why, she burrowed herself against him.

They held each other tightly for what seemed like a long time. She knew they couldn’t last inside the freezer much longer. They’d either have to get out soon—or die frozen in each other’s arms.

“Want to know something funny?” she finally asked him.

“Yes, I’d love to hear s-s-something funny.”

“I feel like you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder all night. And now you actually are.”

“Oh yes?” he asked. “Here I was under the impression I had done something to make you hot under the collar.”

“Just that you’ve been avoiding me.”

“Avoiding you? Well, I suppose I have been. But only because you’ve been peeved with me. So I thought I’d just, you know, s-s-stay out of your way.”

“Peeved with you?” She held him more tightly. “I’ve been nothing of the sort, you silly old fool. And even if I were, why would that cause you to avoid me?”

“I thought perhaps you were fed up with me,” he said. “You know, stuffy old Benchley, always making the same jokes, never playing Woollcott’s games. An old s-s-stick in the mud, that’s me. I thought you’d had quite enough of me. And, well, frankly that made me ill-tempered with you.”

“Had enough of you? Whatever would give you that idea?”

Could he be serious? Before he had arrived at the Algonquin, she had been waiting like a puppy for its master. She would have jumped into his arms when he arrived, if she could have.

“Well,” he explained, “I thought we were having a grand old time at the party up in Chez Fairbanks, just joking and drinking, as usual. But the first opportunity you had to get away, you took it. Something about talking with Mary Pickford, and then you were after Woollcott. And then I didn’t see you for a while. ‘That’s it, old boy,’ I thought to myself. ‘You’re yesterday’s news. Stale as a week-old loaf of bread.’ No wonder you’re sick and tired of me. I’m as exciting as a warm bowl of tapioca.”

She nestled her head against him and squeezed her arms around him. If she hadn’t been freezing cold, she could just about die happy right now—and there seemed to be every chance that she might.

Still, he wasn’t jealous after all. How could she even think he’d be so petty? That wasn’t like Benchley in the least. And he wasn’t avoiding her because he was missing his wife and children. . . .
Well, maybe he is or maybe he isn’t, but in any case he’s not taking the loss out on me. How could I have been so silly?

“Mr. Benchley . . . ?”

“Call me Fred.”

“Fred . . .”

She turned her face up to his.
Kiss me, you fool,
she wanted to say, and chuckled to herself at the sappy thought of it.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“I d-don’t know. Just that it required a c-cold room for you to warm up to me.”

“N-n-nonsense, Mrs. Parker. I’ve always—”

There was a sharp bang on the door.

Wait,
she thought.
Always? Always—what? What was he about to say?

There was another bang on the door. “Is someone in there?”

“Go away!” Dorothy shouted.

“Who’s in there? Mrs. Parker?” It was Woollcott’s voice.

“Aleck, is that you?” Benchley called out.

“Benchley, damn you!” Woollcott responded angrily. “My word, the lengths to which some people will go to avoid playing one of my famous games. What the devil are you two doing in there? Come out of there this moment.” They heard him mutter to himself, “Where is the damn doorknob?”

“Some villain broke it off,” Benchley answered. “Get Frank Case. We’re going to die of hypothermia.”

They heard Woollcott puttering around. “Just a moment. Here’s something.”

There was a clink of metal on metal, and then the clack of the latch. All of a sudden the door opened with a screech. They had to blink because the light was so bright, even though it was merely the few lights of the dim basement. Woollcott’s chubby hands reached in and pulled them out into the cellar corridor. He slammed the door closed behind them.

The subbasement’s heat was delightful. Dorothy sucked in gasps of the stuffy air just to warm up her lungs. She leaned against the stone wall to absorb its heat. Benchley did the same.

“You see?” Woollcott said. “Sometimes I’m fairly handy to have around. Wouldn’t you say?”

“C-c-can’t say a thing. Really shivering now,” she said.

“Now, tell me, whatever were you two doing in there?”

They slyly glanced at each other a little guiltily, as though they had been schoolchildren caught necking in the classroom coat closet.

“Nothing!” they both said at the same time.