Come Hell or Highball by Maia Chance Page A

doling out the raw veg, everyone was probably peckish enough to kill.” I took a huge bite of sausage with tomato catsup. “You know, if either Olive or Eloise had known Horace purchased a film starring Ruby—a saucy film, if that’s what it is—they might’ve been jealous enough to kill.”
    â€œBut to kill Mr. Arbuckle ?” Berta touched her locket. “He was a nice man.”
    Not for the first time, I wondered what Berta’s locket meant to her, and if there was a picture inside. She called herself Mrs ., but then where was Mr. Lundgren now? Berta was a forbidding lady, and I was too chicken to ask.
    â€œI know what you mean,” I said. “Horace was the last one of the bunch I’d expect to be bumped off.” He’d always seemed to be, well, simply there, moseying in the margins, making big bucks, never complaining about his ballerina’s rations. “Aside from his dalliance with Eloise Wright, he’d seemed to be a decent husband and father. It’s a crying shame, especially since Digton’s going to go barking up all the wrong trees.” I pushed down my fear with more bites of sausage. “You know what I think, Berta? I think we ought to figure out who killed Horace ourselves.”
    Berta’s eyes grew round. “That would be dangerous. And foolish.”
    â€œYou still want to get ahold of the reel, don’t you?”
    â€œThat is a financial necessity.”
    â€œOkay, well, if Horace’s death is tangled up with the reel—and I’m not saying it is, but it could be—then looking for the film means looking for the murderer.”
    â€œMrs. Woodby, it is one thing to search for a missing item, and quite another to attempt to unmask a killer.”
    â€œBut if we’re looking for the reel, will the murderer care about that distinction? Nope.”
    â€œThis is not what I intended when we decided to retrieve the reel for Miss Simpkin.”
    â€œWell, I didn’t exactly intend to be an accused murderess who’s just maybe the real murderer’s next victim, either.”
    Berta and I stared at each other for a long, long moment. We were going to do it. We were going to try to solve a murder.
    Which meant I was unquestionably nuts, just like the Prig said.
    *   *   *
    Once Berta and I were on the road again, I broke the silence. “To my way of thinking, it’s obvious that we’ve got to locate Sadie Street and Eloise Wright. One of them has the reel in her bag.” I half hoped Berta would call the whole sleuthing thing off.
    But no.
    â€œThe little trollop has the reel,” Berta said.
    â€œSadie?”
    â€œYes. I am not, of course, a lady who gambles. But if I were, my money would be on her.”
    â€œSo then you think she’s the murderer, too?”
    â€œWhy not? Her eyes are as cold as ice.”
    â€œBut the way Hibbers told it, the reel could just as easily have been in Eloise Wright’s bag.”
    â€œWhy would that one have a film reel? A society matron—”
    I pressed harder on the gas pedal.
    â€œâ€”a rich husband in the ever-so-dull department store business. The other one, the trollop, is an actress. Film reels are her bread and butter. Perhaps she is on the film alongside Ruby Simpkin.”
    A sudden thought hit me. I floored the gas pedal. We zoomed around a bend. Berta shrieked and clutched the dashboard. Cedric skittered on the rear seat.
    â€œCome to think of it,” I said, “Sadie did mention something about embarrassing screen tests the night before last.”
    â€œAha! That is it. The budding starlet has something captured on the film that she would rather forget. Something she perhaps killed to forget.”
    â€œIt’ll be a cinch,” I said. “We’ll learn where Sadie Street lives, and pay her a little visit.”
    *   *   *
    When we arrived at the Longfellow