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

those swinging doors—and do me in.
    Ready to leave, I heard a loud, booming voice. I recognized it—and suddenly realized whom I’d spotted running earlier in the street. A few feet from my table, through a wide archway, was the cocktail lounge. I observed a long mahogany bar, behind which a gigantic mirror reflected rows of liquor bottles arranged in tiers on glass shelves. The voice roared again, angry, metallic. Standing up and sitting back down in a chair on the other side of my table—at that moment the waitress emerged from the kitchen and regarded my version of musical chairs as an act of certifiable madness—I now had a direct view into the lounge.
    Evan Street was thundering about something. Leaning against the bar, one elbow resting on it, he waved his other hand at someone, punctuating his words with a beer bottle. His presence startled me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. After all, he was the new understudy in town. But it did bother me because his boisterous manner was ugly and mean—a spine-chilling rawness to his fury. He demonstrated nothing of the obsequious blather he’d displayed at Cheryl’s apartment.
    He stepped forward, grunted, at one point pushing his index finger into the shoulder of the young man facing him. Dressed in a wrinkled summer suit, shopworn and faded at the elbows, Evan struck me as a blustery itinerant drummer who hadn’t made a sale in days and thus took out his frustrations on hapless waiters. I had no idea what the altercation was about, though the mumbled words of the other man seemed to precipitate another volley of thunder and fire from Evan.
    The young man, dark and slender with a long melancholy face under a shaggy haircut, drew his lips into a thin line. He backed up against the bar but Evan pushed closer, jabbing the man in the chest, and calling him by name: Dak. Or at least it sounded like that, the name momentarily lost in the tinkle of glasses and a long laugh from some unseen drinker somewhere else in the lounge. Then, to my horror, the young man struck out his fist, connecting with Evan’s shoulder. Surprised, Evan jabbed at Dak’s chest and then a fist grazed his cheek. Another solid punch to Dak’s shoulder. Evan spat out, “Damn you.” I heard the bartender yell something, and, like that, they separated. Dak’s voice shook. “Damn you, Evan. You’ll pay.”
    Dak turned to go but collided with a third man, suddenly in my line of sight: a smallish bull of a man, thickset, young but balding, his blond hair close-cropped and spotty. This new man flicked a stubby finger against Dak’s chest, dismissive, nasty. Dak maneuvered around this interloper, who now purposely blocked Dak’s path. Sweating, anxious, Dak twisted around him and disappeared from my sight.
    An ugly scene, stunning. My hand gripped the edge of the table.
    Evan arched his back and whistled triumphantly, but at that moment he looked into the dining room where he spotted me. Our eyes locked. An awful moment, truly, for I saw iciness there, a hard agate stare, unfriendly. The man scared me.
    But then, shaking his head, he attempted an ah-shucks grin, a little-boy twist of his head as he bit his lip, and he moved away. Over his shoulder he said to an unseen Dak, “The drinks are on you, buddy. You got the bucks. I’m a parasite in this one-hoss town.” His fireplug friend let out a false laugh, but didn’t move.
    In a cavalier, jaunty stride, Evan sailed into the dining room and paused at my table. “Miss Ferber, you do show up in strange places.” He chuckled. “But obviously so do I.” He looked back at Dak and the other man, both standing in the doorway watching him. Dak was absently rubbing a bruised shoulder, his eyes dark with anger. Evan leaned into me confidentially and said through clenched teeth, “No one believes that someday I’ll return to Hollywood and be the biggest star.” This bizarre remark, apropos of nothing I’d just heard, hung in the air like a