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

prodigal son, the mischief-maker growing up in Maplewood who ran away to California but has come back home, haggard maybe, who doesn’t want…” He stopped. “Like my mother, I talk too much…or not at all. This is the way I talk to myself . I’m sorry—I don’t know why I just said all that…I tell strangers…”
    “I’m not a stranger. We have met.”
    A crooked smile. “I know, I know. But I knew you before we met. You’re in The Royal Family . I mean, you’re real famous.”
    “So, I gather, is your mother.” I smiled. “You know, you don’t have to do what people tell you to do.”
    He chuckled. “That’s easy for you to say. During my wandering days, my hobo journeys, my stays in one-hoss-town jails, my mother was busy planning my life, filling in the blanks in my biography. The legend of the boy preacher grew in my absence. As a boy, I got on that stage—I preached. The boy Jesus at the temple. She knew all along I’d crawl back home. She even chose a bride for me.”
    “Annika?”
    He nodded. “She even talks like my mother, Annika does. When she preaches, she becomes my mother.”
    “And you’re to marry her?”
    “I suppose so. This fall. I actually do like her.” He squinted at his own troubled words.
    “Dak, I like a lot of people but I’d never marry them.”
    He laughed. “You don’t have Clorinda Roberts Tyler as your mother.”
    “No, I have a mother who has devoted her life to keeping me unmarried.”
    “That seems unfair…to you.”
    “After a while it became the life I wanted myself.”
    “And you believe that?”
    That gave me pause. This quiet, unassuming man, so faint of voice, had me trembling in the small café. How had that happened?
    Slowly, almost sadly, “I have to. Now.”
    “Well, maybe that’s my life. A marriage this fall to Annika and years to follow in which I come to convince myself that it’s what I wanted all along. Just call me Dakota Cotton Mather Roberts.”
    We lapsed into silence, paradoxically both comfortable and disconcerting. I empathized with this smart young man, though I sensed the rawness of his spoken feelings could be contagious—one of those souls who gives you pause. A mirror that reveals the darkness we want hidden. A Sorrows of Young Werther temperament, a little world-weary, housed now in a lost generation. Sitting there, eyes on him, I understood him. Yes, truly. I knew so little about him—a collection of moments watching him react to folks around him—and yet I knew him. I liked him. Here was a decent man. But I quaked because everything about him suggested doom and disaster. I couldn’t shake my worry.
    A voice screeched from outside the café. “Dakota, for heaven’s sake.”
    Annika, arms cradling a stack of leaflets, barged into the café, nearly spilling the sheets onto the tiled floor. “Why do you wander away? You’re supposed to help me hand out the flyers.” Her words ran together. “Your mother is frantic. She almost called the constable. She threatened to dredge a river for your body.” She laughed at her own unfunny exaggeration.
    Dak glanced at me, then at Annika. “She knows I put in a couple afternoons at the theater.” He turned back toward me. “Frank Resnick, the stage manager, hired me to do some handyman work. They didn’t really need me but he insisted I be there. I mean, he insisted . I welcomed the job…”
    “You don’t need money.” Annika spoke over his words.
    “It’s not for the money. It’s…you know, different. All day at the Assembly of God makes me restless.”
    “So you need to hammer nails into boards?”
    Dak’s eyes got wide, alert. “Well, yeah.”
    “Let’s go.”
    He stood and addressed me. “Goodbye, Miss Ferber.” A slight, boyish wave in my direction.
    Annika looked at me for the first time. “We meet again.” There was nothing pleasant about her brittle tone. Suddenly, she rushed to my table and thrust one of the flyers into my hand. She scurried back