Lair of Dreams Read online

  I don’t, Evie thought.

  “There’s talk the killer—that John Hobbes fella—wasn’t even human. That he was some kinda ghost.” The cabbie’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror for a moment, seeking either confirmation or dismissal.

  Evie wondered what the cabbie would say if she told him the truth—that John Hobbes was most definitely not of this earth. He was worse than any demon imaginable, and she’d barely escaped with her life.

  Evie looked away. “People say all sorts of things, don’t they? Oh, look. Here we are!”

  The driver pulled up to the monolithic splendor that was the Grant Hotel. Through the cab window, Evie spied a scrum of reporters staked out on the hotel steps, smoking and trading gossip. As she exited the cab, they dropped their cigarettes along with whatever gossip du jour held their fickle interest and surged forward to greet her, shouting over one another: “Miss O’Neill! Miss O’Neill! Evie, be a real sweetheart and look this way!”

  Evie obliged them, posing with a smile.

  “How was the show tonight, Miss O’Neill?” one asked.

  “You tell me, Daddy.”

  “Find out anything interesting?”

  “Oh, lots of things. But a lady never tells—unless it’s on the radio for money,” Evie said, making them laugh.

  One smirking reporter leaning against the side of the hotel called out to Evie: “Whaddaya think about all these Diviners coming forward now that you let the cat out of the bag on your own talents?”

  Evie gave the reporter a tight smile. “I think it’s swell, Mr. Woodhouse.”

  T. S. Woodhouse raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

  Evie fixed him with a stare. “Sure. Perhaps we’ll start our own nightclub—hoofers and hocus-pocus. If you’re nice, we’ll even let you in.”

  “Maybe you’ll have your own union,” another reporter joked.

  “There are some folks who say the Diviners are no better than circus freaks. That they’re dangerous. Un-American,” T. S. Woodhouse pressed.

  “I’m as American as apple pie and bribery,” Evie cooed to more laughter.

  “Love this Sheba,” the second reporter murmured, jotting it down. “She makes my job easy.”

  Woodhouse wasn’t giving up. “Sarah Snow, who shares the radio with you, called Diviners ‘a symptom of a nation that’s turned away from God and American values.’ What do you say to that, Miss O’Neill?”

  Sarah Snow. That small-time, Blue Nose pain in the neck, always looking down at Diviners in general and Evie in particular. She’d like to give that two-bit Bible thumper a kick in the backside. But that kind of publicity Evie didn’t need. And she wasn’t about to give it to Sarah Snow for free by starting a war.

  “Oh, does Sarah Snow have a radio show? I hadn’t noticed,” Evie said, batting her lashes. “Come to think of it, no one else has, either.”

  As Evie bounded up the steps, T. S. Woodhouse sidled up next to her. “You went after me a little hard there, Woody,” Evie sniffed.

  “Keeps things interesting, Sheba. Also keeps anybody from suspecting our arrangement. Speaking of, my wallet’s feeling a little light these days, if you catch my drift.”

  With a careful glance at the other reporters, Evie slipped Woodhouse a dollar. Woodhouse held the bill up to the light.

  “Just making sure you’re not printing your own these days,” he said. Satisfied, he pocketed the bill and tipped his hat. “Pleasure doing business with you, Sweetheart Seer.”

  “Be a good boy, Woody, and go type something swell about me, will ya?” Evie said.

  With a little backward wave, she flitted past, letting the bellhop open the gilded door for her while the reporters continued to shout her name.

  The lobby of the Grant Hotel was festive chaos. Partygoers of all sorts—flappers, hoofers, gold diggers, Wall Street boys, and aspiring movie stars—draped themselves over every available inch of furniture while baffled hotel guests wondered if they’d wandered into a traveling circus by mistake. On the far side of the lobby, the angry hotel manager wiggled his fingers up high, trying to get Evie’s attention.

  “Horsefeathers!” Evie hissed. Turning the other way, she squeezed through the tourniquet of revelers on her way toward the Overland Room, where she spied Henry and Theta in a corner. As she shimmied sideways through the swells, past a sad-eyed accordion player singing something doleful in Italian, people turned and pressed closer to her.

  “Say, I’ve got to talk with you, sweetheart,” a good-looking boy in a cowboy hat purred. “See, there’s a little interest in an oil speculation out in Oklahoma, and I want to know if it’s going to pay off.…”

  “I can’t see the future, only the past,” Evie demurred, pushing on.

  “Evie, DAAAARLING!” drawled a redhead in a long silver cape trimmed in peacock feathers. Evie had never seen the woman before in her life. “We simply MUST talk! It’s URGENT, my dove.”

  “Why, then, I’d best go put on my urgent shoes,” Evie called back without stopping, bumping headlong into someone. “Pardon me, I…” Evie’s eyes narrowed. “Sam Lloyd.”

  “Hiya, Baby Vamp,” he said, ever-ready smirk in place. “Miss me?”

  Evie put her hands on her hips. “What crime have I committed that has landed you on my doorstep?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.” He stole a canape from a passing waiter’s tray and shoved it in his mouth, rolling his eyes in rapture. “Caviar. Boy, do I love caviar.”

  Evie tried to go around Sam, but he moved with her.

  “Could you step aside, please?” she asked.

  “Aww, doll. Are you still sore because I told the Daily News that my sleuthing helped you catch the Pentacle Killer and that the reason you never come to the Creepy Crawly is that you’re so crazy about me you have to stay away?”

  Evie put her hands on her hips. “Yes, Sam. I am sore about that.”

  Sam spread his arms wide in a gesture of apology. “It was a charitable act!”

  Evie raised an eyebrow.

  “The museum needed the press, and that story gave us a little razzle-dazzle. It also got me a date with a chorus girl. A blond named Sylvia. You would not believe what that girl can do with—”

  “Good-bye, Sam.” Evie tried to push her way through the crowd but got stuck again. Sam followed her.

  “Aww, c’mon, doll. Let’s let bygones be bygones. Did I get mad when you told them I was… how’d ya put it again?”

  “A liar, a cheat, and the sort of scum the other pond scum try to swim away from?”

  “That was it.” Sam looked at her with big peepers. “Great to see you again, Sheba. Say, why don’t we find some little corner and catch up over a sloe gin fizz?”

  “Holy smokes!” Eyes wide, Evie pointed across the room. “Is that Buster Keaton?”

  Sam whirled around. “Where?”

  Quickly, Evie ducked past him and pressed through the throng. Behind her, she could hear Sam calling: “Was that nice?”

  At last, Evie collapsed into a seat beside Theta, who blew smoke from a cigarette perched at the end of a long ebony holder. “Well, if it isn’t the Sweetheart Seer herself. Was that Sam?” Theta asked.

  “Yes. Every time I run into him, I have to remind myself that murder is a crime.”

  “I don’t know, Evil. He sure is handsome,” Henry teased.

  Evie glowered. “He’s trouble. And he still owes me twenty clams.”

  “Say,” Henry asked, “how about that party you went to last week at the Egyptian Palace Room? On the level: Do they really have live seals in the lobby fountain?”

  “Occasionally. When the residents don’t steal them for their own bathtubs. Oh, daaarlings, next time there’s a party there, you must come!”

  “Daaahlings, you maahhst cahhhme,” Theta mimicked. “Those elocution lessons are turning you into a regular princess, Evil.”

  Evie bristled. “Well, I can’t very well be on the radio sounding like a hick from Ohio.”

  “Don’
t get sore, Evil. I’d like you even if it sounded like you’d swallowed a whole bag of marbles. Just don’t forget who your friends are.”

  Evie put her hand on Theta’s. “Never.”

  There was a loud crash as a monkey trailing a leash knocked a vase off a table. It leaped from the bald head of a very surprised man and onto a drapery panel, where it now clung, screeching. A girl wearing a puffy feather boa pleaded with the monkey, but it would not be wooed. The animal held tight, squawking and hissing at the crowd.

  “Where’d they come from?” Henry asked.

  Evie shot her eyes heavenward, trying to remember. “I think they’re with a circus from Budapest. I met them in Times Square and invited them along. Say, did you hear what Sarah Snow said about Diviners?”

  “Who’s Sarah Snow?” Theta said on a stream of cigarette smoke.

  “Exactly my point,” Evie said, triumphant. “Well, anyway, she said Diviners were un-American is what.”

  “I wouldn’t let it bother you, darlin’,” Henry said. “You’ve got bigger problems.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Henry jerked his head in the direction of the scowling hotel manager walking briskly toward their table.

  Quickly, Evie slipped her flask into her garter. “Oh, applesauce. Here comes Mr. Killjoy.”

  “Miss O’Neill! What is going on here?” the hotel manager thundered.

  Evie smiled brightly. “Don’t you just adore parties?”

  The manager’s lip twitched. “Miss O’Neill, as the manager of the Grant Hotel, what I adore—nay, demand—is an end to this nightly chaos. You have made a mockery of a venerable New York institution, Miss O’Neill. There are reporters camped outside the premises every night just to see what fresh madness will erupt—”

  “Isn’t it mahhh-velous?” Evie drew the word out. “Think of how much publicity the hotel’s getting for free!”

  “This is not the sort of notoriety the Grant wants, Miss O’Neill. This behavior is intolerable. The party in the Overland Room, as well as the one currently occupying the lobby, is now over. Do I make myself clear?”

  Brows knitted together in concern, Evie nodded. “Perfectly.” She positioned two fingers between her teeth and let loose a piercing whistle. “Dolls, the lobby’s become abso-tive-ly murder. We can’t stay here any longer, I’m afraid.”

  The hotel manager nodded curtly in appreciation.

  “So everybody up to my room!” Evie shouted, and the stampede began. The Hungarian girl in the feather boa handed the monkey’s leash to the hapless hotel manager, who stood paralyzed as the partygoers swarmed the elevators and stairs.

  “You looking to get evicted again, Evil?” Theta asked as they dashed up the gleaming wooden staircase. “What is this, hotel number two?”

  “Three, but who’s counting? Besides, they won’t evict me. They love me here!”

  Theta looked back down at the hotel manager, who was shouting at a bellhop who was trying to distract the screeching beast with a broom while a telephone operator frantically connected cables in search of someone, anyone, who could remove a monkey from the Grant Hotel.

  Theta shook her head. “I’ve seen that look before. It ain’t love, kid.”

  Evie’s room was so thick with people that they spilled out into the elegant damask-papered hallways of the Grant’s third floor. Evie, Theta, and Henry took refuge in the bathroom’s claw-foot tub, leaning their backs against one side of it and resting their legs across the other. In the room just beyond, the accordionist launched into the same doleful number he’d played twice before.

  “Not again!” Evie growled and drank from her flask. “We should get him to play one of your songs, Henry. You should write for the accordion. An entire accordion revue! It’ll be a sensation.”

  “Gee, why didn’t I think of that before? Henry DuBois’s Accordion Follies! The Ins and Outs of Love…” Henry sighed. “That’s almost bad enough to be a Herbert Allen song.”

  “Herbert Allen! I’ve heard his songs on the radio!” Evie said. “I like the one that goes, ‘I love your hair / I love your nose / I love you from your head to toes, My daaaaarling girl!’ Or the one that goes, ‘Daaarling, you’re top banana / Baaaby, you’re my peaches and cream / Orange you gonna be my Sherbet—’”

  “For the love of Pete, please stop,” Henry groaned, cradling his head in his hands.

  Theta poured the rest of her booze into Henry’s glass. “Herbert keeps getting his rotten songs in the show over Henry’s just because he’s published,” she explained. “It’s all the same song. The same horrible song.”

  “Gee, they do sort of sound alike, now that you mention it,” Evie said, thinking it over.

  “Every time I play something for Wally, Herbert finds a way to sabotage it,” Henry said, picking up his drink again. “I tell you, if Herbie Allen fell off an apple truck tomorrow, I wouldn’t cry.”

  “Well, then we hate Herbert Allen,” Evie said. “I’m sure whatever you write will be dreamy, Hen. And then we’ll all be singing your songs in hotel bathrooms.”

  Theta appraised Evie coolly through her cigarette haze. “Jericho asked after you.”

  “Oh? And how is dear old Jericho?” Evie kept her voice even, though her heart beat faster.

  “Tall. Blond. Serious,” Theta said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that big lug is sweet on you. And you on him.”

  “You don’t know better!” Evie mumbled. “You don’t know at all.”

  “You can’t stay away from the Bennington forever, Evil.”

  “I can so! May I remind you that Uncle Will wanted me to keep my talent under lock and key? Why, if I’d listened to him, I wouldn’t have any of this,” she said, throwing her arms wide and nearly knocking Henry’s drink from his hands.

  “We’re in a bathtub, Evil,” Theta said.

  “And snug. As. Bugs.” Evie knocked back more gin. A warm buzz was starting to take the edge off the headache from her object reading and she wanted it to stay that way. “I refuse to become morose! This is a party. Tell me something happy.”

  “Flo’s calling a press conference next week announcing our new act and letting me give my first interview as Theta St. Petersburg-ski, smuggled into this country by loyal servants during Revolution,” Theta said, in an exaggerated Russian accent. She scoffed. “What a load of bunk. And I gotta sell that act to those tabloid jackals.”

  “Well, it’s not like they can prove otherwise. For all you know, you could be a Russian aristocrat. Right, Henry?”

  “Right,” Henry said, staring at his drink.

  Evie squinted at Henry. It wasn’t like him to be so solemn. “Henry, you’re very quiet this evening.” She put her face up to his. “Is it because you’re an artiste? Is this what artistes do? Get sad and quiet in party bathtubs?”

  “Mostly, we take baths in bathtubs.”

  “You are sad. Is it because of this Herbert Sherbet fellow?”

  Henry pasted on a smile. “Just beat.”

  A girl and her fella stumbled into the bathroom. “When will these accommodations be available?” the girl slurred. Her date held her up. “I should like to make a resh… reservation.”

  “I’m afraid this booth has been reserved indefinitely,” Henry said with an apologetic bow of his head.

  The girl peered at him through smeary eyes. “Huh?”

  “Scram!” Theta yelled.

  The girl pulled up the strap of her gown with as much dignity as she could muster. “I shall complain to the management,” she said and slammed the door behind her.

  “I think that’s my cue,” Henry said, pushing out of the bathtub. “Thanks for a swell party, Evie.”

  “Oh, Henry! You’re not leaving yet, are you?”

  “Forgive me, darlin’. I have a pressing engagement. With sleep.”

  “Henry,” Theta said. Her voice carried a hint of warning. “Not too long.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry about what
?” Evie asked, swiveling her head from Henry to Theta and back again.

  “Anything,” Henry said, giving a courtly bow. “Ladies, I’ll see you in my dreams.”

  “What was that about?” Evie asked once Henry had gone.

  “It’s nothing,” Theta answered.

  “Uh-oh. I know that face. That isn’t a happy Theta face,” Evie said, sitting up so suddenly she sloshed the contents of her flask onto her dress. Theta took the flask away.

  “That’s not fair,” Evie groused. “I shall report you to the authorities for the crime of gin-napping!”

  “You can have it back in a sec. I got something I wanna talk about.”

  Evie rolled her head left toward Theta and sighed heavily. “Oh, all right.”

  “I wanna talk about what happened to us. I wanna talk about the Pentacle Killer.”

  Evie pouted. “That is pos-i-tute-ly the last topic I wish to discuss.”

  “You say that every time I bring it up. I know you told the papers that John Hobbes was a crazed madman. But you and me, we both know that ain’t the truth. That night, when I was trapped with Hobbes in the theater, I felt something I’d never felt before.”

  “What was that?”

  Theta took a deep breath and let it out. “Evil.”

  “Yes?”

  “Not you. I meant I felt the presence of evil.”

  “Well. It’s over now,” Evie said, hoping Theta would take the hint.

  “Is it?”

  “Well, sure. He’s gone,” Evie said a little defiantly. “It’s all going to be the berries from now on. Nothing but blue skies. Just like the song.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Theta said, leaning her head back against the cool bathroom tiles. “You still dreaming about that eye symbol?”

  “No. I’m not. My dreams are pos-i-tute-ly the swellest,” Evie said, but she didn’t look at Theta when she said it.

  “It just seems like something’s bubbling up. Something bad.”

  Evie slung an arm around her pal’s shoulders. “Darling Theta. There’s no need to worry,” Evie said, expertly stealing her flask back from Theta. “Do you know, in the taxi on the way here, I saw a billboard for Marlowe Industries. It said ‘The future of America.’ The future is now, and we’re on the tippy-top of the world. Our best lives are waiting for us around that next bend. We just have to reach for them. Forget bad dreams. They’re just dreams. Let’s drink to the future of America. The future of us. Long may we both reign.”