Final Curtain: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) Read Free Page A

you’re different from Edna,” George insisted. “She believes all of it, but enjoys none of it.”
    “Anyway,” Cheryl went on, “he’s rather a bold sort. Unapologetically brash. He may kill Louis Calhern to get his chance at playing lead.”
    The play starred veteran actors Louis Calhern and Irene Purcell, both solid Broadway troopers. Louis was inspired casting as Tony—dark and striking and muscular—and very charming. The compelling cosmopolite. He’d have to watch his back with that aggressive understudy.
    George shrugged. “Frank Resnick is stage manager, right?”
    Cheryl nodded.
    “Not Frank from The Front Page ?” I asked. “I’ve met him.”
    George nodded. “Exactly. Perfect for the job. The ideal stage manager. Taciturn, deliberate. A no-nonsense guy. A man whose pointed finger makes you jump hoops.”
    Cheryl added, “You know, he begged for the summer job, which surprised me. He’s left the hit The Fear Factor at the Selwyn just to work summer stock with me. Unheard of, really. When I asked him why, he said he needed a change. Manhattan was getting to him, he said. Another lie, I figured. But he seemed hell-bent on being in New Jersey this summer. I found it a little odd.”
    “It is odd,” I volunteered. “I’ve had only one short conversation with him—at some cocktail party. Like me, he didn’t want to be there. You talk to the man for a few minutes and he looks as though he’s fallen asleep. Then he’ll mumble yes or no or maybe . Then he turns his back on you.” I frowned. “Quite the summer you’ve orchestrated for me, Cheryl.”
    “Only the best,” she said without a smile.
    “He’d best control this…this Evan Street.” I sat back and sipped my coffee, watching Cheryl over the rim. She avoided looking at me.
    “I wonder about that.” Cheryl looked to the door.
    “What?” From George.
    “Well, when he called—earlier today, as I said—I mentioned Edna’s visit for coffee and…”
    “And he wants my autograph?”
    “He invited himself over.”
    “For Lord’s sake, Cheryl.” I put down my cup a little too quickly.
    “He has that way about him.”
    George was enjoying this. “Cheryl, I’ve never considered you subject to frivolous whims and idle flattery—surrendering to a man’s charms.”
    Cheryl didn’t seem pleased with that. She celebrated her own toughness, this feisty woman who’d made and sold bathtub gin during Prohibition and was a legendary hard-nosed poker player. Now she stood and moved dishes and plates into the kitchen, ignoring a look from George. She frowned at the Kandinsky, and I didn’t blame her: it seemed a fourth presence in the room. Her back to us, Cheryl spoke firmly. “I kept saying no, no, no, and ended up giving him directions.”
    Of course, at that moment—with the exquisite timing of a Broadway melodrama—the doorbell chimed. Cheryl jumped, I flinched, and George simply shook his head. “Act one, scene one.” His voice was laced with a mixture of amusement and, I thought, dread.
    Evan Street, the unknown actor, strode into the apartment as though he’d recently conquered in battle, rushing into the center of the room, standing there ramrod straight, arms on hips, head tilted to one side, a dazzling smile directed at no one in particular. The behavior silenced all three of us. I thought suddenly of a Broadway curtain going up and the lead actor assuming the stage and expecting and obtaining the burst of rowdy applause from his loud and devoted claque. But no one applauded now. Evan Street laughed at something no one else heard, and half-bowed.
    You saw a young man who seemed a refugee from a nineteenth-century melodrama, the swashbuckling hero—true, sans moustache or goatee—but with coal-black hair abundantly swept back from an imposing brow, a wide expansive face, darkly tanned, with a chiseled chin and riveting cobalt-blue eyes that seemed to purposely not blink. Tall, slender with a sinewy muscular frame, he