Come Hell or Highball by Maia Chance Read Free Book Online

to come, too. “And Olive, darling,” I said, “I’ll have my maid with me.”
    â€œYour maid? Do you mean Penny?”
    Penny had been my maid. Now she worked for Chisholm, poor thing. “No, no,” I said. “Berta.”
    â€œI thought Berta was your cook. She was at the funeral, too. Does she go everywhere with you?”
    â€œToodle-oo!” I made a smoochy noise and cut the connection.
    *   *   *
    The afternoon turned out to be splendid for motoring, balmy and bright. Berta and Cedric napped the entire drive, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I whipped down the highway, spinning plans about the new life I could start with fifteen hundred dollars—Berta and I had agreed on a 50–50 split. I could take a secretarial course—wait. Too much sitting. I had my hips to consider. What about learning how to be a librarian? Nix that; I look terrible in cardigans.
    By the time we rumbled through Hare’s Hollow, the sunlight had gone golden, the shadows long.
    The Foghorn, a rambling inn on Main Street, was more lively than usual. Motorcars clogged the curb out front. I frowned. It wasn’t tourist season yet. What was all the hullaballoo?
    When I drew up to Dune House’s gates a few minutes later, my frown deepened. A throng of men in baggy suits milled around the gates. Some held notebooks and pencils. Others toted boxy black cameras, with camera cases strapped over their shoulders.
    â€œReporters,” I said.
    Berta started awake. She mumbled in Swedish as she straightened her hat.
    I braked inches away from a fellow who was aiming his camera at my windshield. “I’d forgotten. Horace complained about the reporters.”
    The reporters went saggy-shouldered when they saw it was only Berta and me. One of them kicked the ground.
    â€œAnd I thought I didn’t look half bad in this hat,” I said.
    â€œThey wish to see the motion picture stars,” Berta said. “Bruno Luciano and Sadie Street.”
    â€œOh, I know.”
    The gatekeeper scurried up to my window. When he saw who I was, he yelled at the reporters to get back. They ignored him.
    â€œGo on ahead, Mrs. Woodby,” the gatekeeper said. “They’re like flies—gotta swat them away.”
    I crept the Duesy forward, and the crowd of reporters parted. I was almost through when a familiar voice said, “Well, well, well. Lola Duffy. What a treat .”
    Duffy? My heart skittered like a gramophone needle.
    â€œHello, Miss Shanks,” I said. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly I heard my knuckles crack.
    Ida Shanks heard them crack, too, and it made her smile.
    I have a nemesis, and her name is Miss Ida Shanks. She is the society gossip columnist for the New York Evening Observer, and she has enjoyed a profitable career at, in part, my expense. Not a month has gone by without a wicked comment about me from this harpy, my identity disguised by only the flimsiest euphemistic veil. The trouble is, I’m on quicksand when it comes to Ida Shanks: she is one of the few people who knows that the DuFeys are really Duffys, and that before we made it to Park Avenue, our return address was 5 Polk Street, Scragg Springs, Indiana.
    Ida knows these secrets, by the way, because she’s from Scragg Springs, too.
    Ida wore her usual getup: blue suit, moth-eaten fox fur, wilt-flowered hat, stockings that bagged around her sparrow’s ankles, witchy boots. “Gadding about so soon after your dear departed helpmeet’s demise?” she said.
    â€œGadding about?” I asked “Are we caught inside a P. G. Wodehouse novelette?”
    â€œWho is this appalling creature?” Berta whispered to me.
    â€œI have heard murmurs,” Ida said, “that your hubby’s legacy was not so ample as one might’ve thought. No comment, Mrs. Woodby?” She dug a notebook and pencil from her dented satchel, and started scribbling.