Earlier that afternoon, munching on reheated leftovers Rebecca placed before me, I reread the aborted “Letter to Mr. P.,” as well as the personal entries in the small notepad. From the grave, Roddy was telling me something. But what? In the morning I fielded calls from Hammerstein’s publicist about tomorrow’s Show Boat opening; I took calls from Jed Harris’ office about The Royal Family. Yet, though I chatted about Show Boat and The Royal Family throughout the morning, it was as though I remained removed from them. I was the stranger from out of town, maybe Keokuk, Iowa, someone mildly interested in both highly-touted openings. Instead, I ran my fingers over Roddy’s papers, and one awful word echoed in my head like a refrain from Edgar Allan Poe: murder murder murder. I closed my eyes, saw flashes of lightning, blood red and dark blue and sunburst yellow. Blackness. When Waters stopped to drop off something for his mother, I caught him as he readied to leave.
What do You think about Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries)?
