Free Final Curtain: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) by Ed Ifkovic Page B

other. So Gus cursed Dak out, everyone froze, and Frank comes running, defending Dak. Gus yelled—he’s a weakling and a sissy. Pitiful. Gotta have people save him. Frank spotted me standing there laughing at it all. You know, I can size up any guy’s weakness. Almighty Gus, Hitler youth himself. That’s his weakness—blind faith in authority. It comes in handy, you know, my sizing folks up. Dak is weak and Gus thinks he’s strong. I got both their numbers. It gives you an edge over folks.”
    I raised my voice. “Not the building block of lasting friendship.”
    He shook his head. “You know, later on, I heard Dak telling Frank how much he hates me . Not Gus. Me !”
    “You seem to enjoy being hated, Evan,” George noted.
    Bea looked nervous. “Evan, you’re having fun with us, right?”
    George shot her a look. It was like a cold knife stuck into the ribs.
    “Sooner or later, everyone hates me.” Evan interlaced his fingers behind his head.
    “And that’s an enviable state?” George’s voice was chilly.
    “Of course. It just tells me that I’ve won yet again.”

Chapter Five
    Two days later, returning to the inn after a lengthy and tiring morning rehearsal, I slowly climbed the flight of stairs to my room. Pausing in the hallway as I searched for my key, I heard a loud burst of chatter below in the lobby. I stepped back to the landing in time to see Evan leaning on the reception desk. Crazily, he was banging the reception bell, the ding ding ding punctuating his performance. His booming voice echoed off the old wood panels, up the stairs. Leaning over the banister, I saw him adjust a cuff, so mannered a gesture it seemed some stage business. He whistled. Finally, perhaps because there was no one left to annoy, he exclaimed to no one in particular, “A new home, and in style.”
    At that, he rushed up the stairs, and I wasn’t fast enough to escape him. I backed up, fumbled for my key, as he planted himself at the top of the stairs. “Ah, Miss Ferber, we’re neighbors.”
    “Lucky me.”
    “They told me you’re in room 21. Lucky 21. Mr. Kaufman is in 23. Well, I’m lucky 27, at the end of the hall.”
    “I thought your finances, sir, were…how should I say this?—meager?” I found my key and turned away.
    He let out a fierce, booming roar. He stepped close to me, leaning in, his face beaming, and I smelled onions on his breath. I backed off. “Please, Evan. This is a quiet inn.” Down the hall a door cracked open for a second, then was quietly shut.
    He was carrying some parcels wrapped in brown paper and tied with a white cord. Now, shifting his stance, one toppled to the floor and rested on the exquisite oriental carpet. Amused, he kicked it with his boot, as though maneuvering a football down the hall toward room 27. “New shirts. Blue and tan and…No holes in the elbows. When I take you and Mr. Kaufman out to dinner tonight, my treat, I’ll look as stylish as you two.” The kicked parcel banged into a wall. The paper ripped. Then, insanely, he dropped his other packages and kicked them down the hall.
    “One, I have other plans for dinner.” Though, of course, I didn’t. I fixed him in my stare. “And two, you’ll never be more than a new shirt, sir.”
    He ignored the slight—I doubted that he heard me. “How about a pearl tie-pin? Real gold-plated. Like a nineteenth-century gambler on your showboat?” He tapped a small package in a breast pocket.
    “Pearls?” I questioned. “Accompanying swine?”
    He didn’t care, laughing so hard I thought he’d double over. “Now, now, Miss Ferber. You are a kidder.”
    Then, in a garish display worthy of, say, my own dandy Gaylord Ravenal leaping onto a showboat from a Mississippi levee, he withdrew a generous wad of cash from a pocket, fanned the bundle before me, and backed off, still kicking the parcels strewn before him.
    I called after him. “Good fortune, Evan?”
    “I’ve been waiting for this for a month now. An uncle I