The Impersonator (29 page)

So much for my mystery-solving career.
Mind your own business,
Mother would have said. From now on, I would. Anyway, I was in this just for the money. Wasn’t I?

Only fifteen days until I left for Sacramento.

39

Carr Cousins Extravaganza

Opening Night: Wednesday, September 17

Cliff House Ballroom

9:00
P.M.

Invitations went out Tuesday, hand-delivered to the family, Mrs. Applewhite, Marie, Clyde, and members of the household staff. We were delighted to have David return Wednesday afternoon in time to carry chairs to the ballroom and help finish hanging our painted backdrops. By dinnertime the twins were in such a tizzy they couldn’t eat.

Promptly at nine I cranked up a Sousa march on the Victrola and introduced the show in my best emcee imitation.

The first act started stiffly as the girls worked through their dance routine—mostly simple Charleston steps—against a ragtime background with a couple of pauses for jokes. They looked adorable in their matching flapper frocks and headbands. Wild applause gave Val’s confidence a lift that carried her through the second act, her dramatic recitation of “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes.

Caro’s magic act followed. Dressed in a black cape and turban, she announced that she was going to make a coin disappear. As her assistant, Val, set up a small table and chair, Caro began the patter that was designed to distract. “I’ll need to borrow a coin from someone in the audience.”

Ross pulled a nickel from his pocket. “Will I get it back?” he teased.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” she said grandly, as if she were addressing a room of five hundred, “I am setting the nickel here on the tablecloth, as you can see, and covering it with this glass tumbler. Assistant! A sheet of writing paper, please. Thank you. Now watch closely as I cover the glass with this stationery,” she said, pressing the paper tightly around the upside down tumbler so that the coin could not be seen and the tumbler was invisible beneath its paper covering. “I’ll just tap the table with the glass three times: one, two, three, and say the magic word, Abracadabra, and—oh, dear.” She whisked away the paper-covered tumbler and there was Ross’s nickel.

“Try again,” said Ross helpfully.

Crestfallen, she nodded. “All right, I’ll cover the coin like so, and tap the glass three times, one, two, three, and say the magic word, Abracadabra, and—oh.”

Caro blinked back crocodile tears. The audience oozed sympathy, and I knew we were ready for the finale. “One more time,” she said, setting the paper-covered glass over the nickel. “Three taps on the table—one, two, three, Abracadabra—and this time you’d better work!” With that she slammed her hand down on the paper, which flattened entirely as the audience gasped. The glass had vanished. With a triumphant smile, she pulled it from beneath the table where it had magically fallen through to her lap. A masterful bit of misdirection, if I do say so myself. Stunned applause followed.

As we changed the scene, Henry sidled close enough that only I could hear him. “Some trick, eh? But I’ve got a better one coming. And it ain’t a nickel that’s going to disappear.” I looked past him as if I hadn’t heard. As long as I was at Cliff House among family, Henry was powerless.

It was my turn to solo. In a tuxedo costume I had purchased in Portland, I added a little soft-shoe to the song that goes “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina,” a Tin Pan Alley hit I’d heard William Frawley perform last year to appreciative applause. I sang harmony along with Marion Harris’s recording that I had bought for the performance, and, frankly, I thought Marion and I did a pretty good duet. Halfway through the number I realized I was singing directly to David, as if we were alone in that big ballroom, and I immediately moved my attention to Aunt Victoria. I was becoming way too fond of David. Never mind, I told myself sternly. Time will solve that problem. In twelve days I would be leaving Cliff House forever, and David Murray would be ancient history. A sad, but necessary, ending.

Caroline’s poem was next, and she recited “Little Orphant Annie” in dialect so perfect anyone would have thought she was an Indiana farm girl. There was a brief pause as she slipped into her kimono and put on her white makeup and wig for the finale, the Carr Cousins performing the
Mikado
favorite “Three Little Maids from School Are We.” With our mincing steps, fluttering fans, and twirling parasols, we little maids sang along with the record.

Everything is a source of fun

Nobody’s safe, for we care for none

Life is a joke that’s just begun

Three little maids from school

Our efforts met with vigorous applause. After many bows, David handed us each a rose and declared he wanted to see the entire show again. Aunt Victoria concurred, but I persuaded the girls that the old vaudeville adage “Leave them wanting more” was sound advice. “We’ll do the show again some other time,” I told them.

“How about at your birthday party?” asked Val, the last vestiges of shyness having fallen away somewhere between the ragtime and “The Highwayman.”

Aunt Victoria’s horrified expression suggested this was not socially appropriate. “We’ll see,” I said vaguely.

I was absurdly proud of my young cousins. I looked over at Caro to my right, shaking her head firmly at Henry, who was trying to worm the secret of the magic trick out of her, and Val on my left, who was showing Mrs. Applewhite how her Japanese kimono costume came together. And there was David standing before me saying quietly, “You are a very talented lady, Jessie Carr, but more important, you’re a fine person. I am proud to be your brother.”

There were three falsehoods in that statement that I didn’t care to dwell on.

40

Aunt Victoria chipped a tooth the next morning and asked if I would drop her at the dentist when I took David to the train station.

“If you don’t mind, Jessie dear, Dr. Sandberg can give me a gold crown and afterward I can stop by the drugstore to pick up some more of Ross’s asthma medicine.”

“Of course I don’t mind. I can get Ross’s medicine while the dentist is fixing you up good as new,” I said, thinking that the police station was just a block from the dentist. I would have time to stop there and see whether any word had come from the coroner—and whether or not I could pry the details out of them. Yes, yes, I’d hit a dead end and given up sleuthing, but this was just tying up loose ends. I was curious to know if the body in the warehouse had been killed by the lock-of-hair madman. If so, it was worth pointing out to the police, wasn’t it?

I left Aunt Victoria at Dr. Sandberg’s office. Half an hour remained before the eastbound train to Portland left Dexter, so David volunteered to accompany me to the police station.

Officer Wainwright was not on duty today. A cop in his twenties sat at a big oak desk, typing a report one finger at a time. When we entered, he ceased hunting and pecking with a look of relief and approached the counter. The nameplate on his desk read
T. CLARKSON
. His blue uniform was too big for him and so were his ears, but he looked happy enough to be interrupted by a young lady. I went to work.

“I’m Jessie Carr, Officer, and this is my brother, David Murray,” I said with a shy smile that changed to anxiety as the purported reason for my visit emerged. “I’m one of the people who found the Indian girl’s body by the road a few weeks ago, and, well, I was wondering whether we could sleep safe in our beds at night yet, knowing her killer had been apprehended.”

“No, Miss Carr, I’m terribly sorry. There’s been no arrest on that case. I don’t think there ever will be. Those Indians just won’t talk. But you don’t need to worry about your safety. That was just another case of some drunk Indian buck.”

“You don’t think there’s any connection, then, between that killing and the other two murders?”

His jaw dropped. “What other two murders?”

“Why, the Chinese girl back in ’18 and the girl they found two weeks ago under the stairs in the warehouse.”

“Oh, right, but that girl they found, she died years ago. And I don’t know what Chinese girl you’re talking about.”

“The Chinese girl who was murdered on the docks, strangled, like the others. Some think she was involved in smuggling.”

“Oh, I sorta remember now. It was before I joined up. That was when rumrunners were bringing in liquor from Canada on private boats right up to the docks here, bold as brass, and things got a little rough for a time. A couple men got knifed. And a Chinese girl killed, yes, I heard about it. I guess things got too hot for them in Dexter, and they moved on to somewhere else.”

Somewhere else where bribes greased the skids. But something didn’t fit. “How could there have been rumrunners in Dexter in 1918? Prohibition didn’t start until 1920.”

“
National
Prohibition started in 1920, Miss Carr. You’re not old enough to remember, but Oregon and some other states were dry before that. Oregon’s been dry since 1916.”

Dumbstruck, I could only stare at him. I had absolutely no idea some states went dry before Prohibition. But then, why would I? I was a youngster then, and perhaps we hadn’t toured through any of those states. In any case, wherever we went, there was never any shortage of speakeasies and bars. How would I have known which were legal and which not? They all look alike.

So Henry could have been running illegal liquor as early as 1916. Well, well, there was one mystery solved. That had to be the secret Jessie had discovered. Somehow she’d found out he was mixed up with Canadian bootleggers and had threatened to tell his mother if he didn’t start being “nice.” How he must have loathed that! A smart-mouthed little rich girl, dangling his crimes over his head.

Finally I found my tongue. “There are several similarities among the murders, as I’m sure you realize.” Officer Clarkson did not realize. I explained about the strangling, the age and sex of the victims, and the hair.

“The Indian girl had her hair snipped off too, you say? Let me see…” And to my astonishment, he picked a report out of the file box on the desk behind him and began to flip through the pages.

“Is that the coroner’s report?”

“Yep. Came in yesterday. I’m looking for whether it says anything about her hair.”

“You mind telling us what else it says?”

“Not at all, Miss Carr. Information’s headed for the newspaper anyway. Here, you can look for yourself.”

With David reading over my shoulder, I flipped through the pages, past what I already knew until I found what I didn’t know. Rosita Menendez, her name was. Last known address: Portland. Doc Milner had been right. A Portland woman. What had she been doing in Dexter?

David was frowning. When he saw me looking at him, the frown vanished. “Do you know that address?” I asked.

“I know the street. Near where we were last week.”

“In other words, a seedy part of town.”

“Could call it that. You see anything in there about her hair?”

“No, nothing.”

“That could mean it wasn’t cut off. But it could also mean the coroner didn’t pay any attention to hair.”

“That’s so, Mr. Murray, that’s so.” Officer Clarkson looked approvingly at David. “It also means the same person probably killed those other two, just like you said, Miss Carr. I wonder if the Indian girl was mixed up in rumrunning as well. None of that goes on around here anymore, but then they said she might have been killed somewhere else and dumped here.”

We thanked Officer Clarkson and headed toward the train station, engrossed in speculation. “Is the police department clueless about the rumrunning,” I asked David, “or is someone being paid to look the other way?”

“I wasn’t in it deep enough to get involved in police matters, but it’s likely at least a couple of Dexter’s officers are on the payroll. Payoffs are kept separate so the police don’t know who’s involved except for the guy paying them. Look here, I just had an idea. Last week in Portland I ran into an old school chum. He’s a policeman now. If you give the word, I’ll run him down and ask a few questions about Rosita Menendez. Maybe this is bigger than Dexter.”

I’d been down that road with Benny. Still, I found myself saying, “No harm in that.”

And then, I looked around. “Oh, dear. We’ve passed the drugstore. I have to pick up some medicine for Ross. You go on to the station.”

“Train’s not in yet. I’ll come with you.”

According to the information I’d gleaned from Aunt Victoria, Dexter Drugs had stood on the corner of Wickham and Main ever since Benjamin Costello, the owner’s father, rode into town in 1884 and hitched his medicine wagon to a post on the empty lot. Within a few weeks he’d bought the lot and built a clapboard store that kept townsfolk in Lydia Pinkham’s pills, Ayer’s Sarsaparilla, Luden’s Throat Drops, Dr. Morse’s Indian Root pills, Vicks Vaporub, Jayne’s Expectorant, Dr. David’s entire line of elixirs, and all manner of toiletries, all the while concocting some of his own potions in a mortar and pestle behind the counter. His son studied medicine for two years at the university in Eugene before coming home to assume the family business.

He was helping a middle-aged woman when we entered. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he called from behind the counter, so David and I browsed the shelves for a while. I was not paying attention to their conversation until I overheard the woman say the words “Chinese medicine.” My ears stretched toward the counter.

“Our cook gets them at the Chinese market on Sunday,” she was saying.

“What did they tell her?” asked the pharmacist.

“That it would help with female problems. Change-of-life symptoms. But I didn’t want to, well, try something foreign without asking you.”

“Very wise of you.” Costello examined the dried substance with a magnifying glass, smelled it, tasted it, and squeezed it between his fingers before making his pronouncement. “This is angelica. Some people candy angelica, so I can’t think it could harm you if you want to try it.”

“Cook said the local Orientals treat this man like some kind of doctor.”