Read Online Final Curtain: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) by Ed Ifkovic - Free Book Online

quickly she knocked her empty glass onto the floor, where it smashed into pieces. “Oh, Lord,” she cried and reached for her purse and scattered a few coins onto the table. A meaningless nod at me and she rushed out of the restaurant, brushing by a startled Dak who was doing his best not to look at her—or, I supposed, reach out to stop her, hold her, put a calming palm against her trembling face.
    Even when she was gone, he still didn’t move, as though he’d forgotten his destination, and Mamie Trout, walking in from the kitchen, waved at him. “Posing for animal crackers, Dak?”
    He slid into a chair.
    When Mamie approached him, he waved her away, but not brusquely, a mere gesture that suggested fatigue. She frowned at the shattered glass on the floor and went back into the kitchen.
    I waited, nursing my cherry soda, trying not to stare at the appealing young man. So ethereal his looks, so wistful, the long swan’s neck and the puppy-dog eyes. An unintended sigh escaped his throat as he closed his eyes. Then, slowly, he reached into an over-the-shoulder bag he’d dropped onto the floor, extracted a pad and pen, and furiously began to sketch. From where I sat I could discern a hastily delineated table and chair against a backdrop of a lunch counter.
    “You’re an artist?” I raised my voice.
    He looked up, offered a thin smile, but didn’t answer. He looked nervous, suddenly laying his palm over the sketch, as if I’d discovered him in some compromising vice. He laid down his pencil on the table but then grabbed it, his fingers gripping it tightly. Nervous, he stared away from me.
    “We’ve met. Briefly. Do you remember? In here, in fact. You were with a young girl…Your name is Dakota.”
    His mooncalf eyes got wide. “You remember that?” A long pause. “Of course. Yes, Annika.”
    “Well, I’ve seen you around a bit. Not only with your girlfriend but also at the bar at the inn with Evan Street…”
    He looked scared. “That’s right—I saw you. That wasn’t pretty. The shoving. The punching.” A crooked grin. “Not my best moment.”
    “No one looks good fighting.”
    He kept grinning. “It only feels good.” Then a heartbeat. “But it didn’t even feel good, I’m afraid.”
    “Your girlfriend Annika is very protective…”
    That same thin, sweet smile, broken at the edge. “Yeah, I guess. Right now she’s searching the town for me as we speak.” Sadness in his voice, a tired man.
    “I understand your mother is Clorinda Roberts Tyler, the famous evangelist. I’m afraid I don’t follow—”
    He broke in. “Yeah, the messenger of God.” Said too quickly, sarcastically, but immediately he looked sheepish. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound so…so sharp. My mother is a good woman, a savior of souls for Jesus.” But the sarcasm returned. “I’m the heir apparent to that celestial throne.”
    “You don’t sound happy about it.”
    “People tell me when to be happy. It’s an emotion I have trouble inventing for myself.” He looked toward the door.
    “When you were sketching a second ago, you looked happy. For a moment. A short one. A spark of life in you. Your face was animated.”
    That surprised him. “You saw all that? Well, that’s because I lose myself there.” He tapped the pencil on the pad. “I forget everything else.”
    “Then you’re a real artist.”
    A pause. “Well, thank you, but I don’t think so.”
    “But I sense no one believes that about you…probably few people.”
    A long pause. “Do you believe in predestination, Miss Ferber? A life charted eons ago in heaven by a resolute and infallible God? My mother and stepfather have built a kingdom that mimics a dark heaven like that. My mother, when she preaches, goes to that heaven—and lives are changed for the better. I understand that. I truly believe it. And it’s all right, that life—that spiritual life—except that my mother insists God has chosen me as her successor. Me, the