Excerpt: Sherrie Holt & The Mystery at Sirocco

Sherrie Holt & The Mystery at Scirocco

By Susan Sloate

Chapter One

On the Train to Grand Central

September 1952

The train curved like a long, silver snake through the morning sun and sliced through the beds of gravel and dirt running on either side of the gleaming tracks. As it came closer to its ultimate destination, it picked up speed slightly. There was a small but noticeable rocking on either side.
Inside, the passengers could feel the change in tempo. It seemed to infuse their heartbeats as well. New York! Only an hour away!
Though it was still not quite eight, eyes that had been bleary were brightening perceptibly. Women reached into handbags for their compacts and dusted powder carefully beneath their eyelids and on their blotchy noses. Men removed their handkerchiefs and patted their faces, hoping to wipe away some of the train’s grime.
Everyone straightened up and began to smooth crumpled skirts and jackets and re-tie recalcitrant silk ties.
You want to look your best, coming into New York.
The train was a series of gleaming silver cars linked together from the locomotive to the cab, all containing thirty or more passengers in various states of readiness in their dusty velvet-backed seats, now busily prettying themselves for the morning rush of Grand Central Station, the final stop.
In one of the cars toward the front, in long velvet-covered facing seats, sat a young boy, his attractive, well-dressed mother, reading a fashion magazine with great absorption, and opposite them, a girl of about nineteen.
The boy, ten-year-old Alex Andrews, kept stealing peeks at the girl. It wasn’t just that she was so pretty – chin-length, curly light brown hair frothing under a pristine, obviously new gray hat, which matched her brand-new gray dress with its elbow-length sleeves and starched crinoline skirt, and gray suede pumps which announced, as if in siren tones, that Labor Day had passed, autumn had officially begun, and therefore white shoes were no longer acceptable wear for well-dressed ladies.
The girl’s eyes, partially hidden under the gray nose veil of her hat, were brown too, and had a lively, slightly humorous cast. Her carefully-curled eyelashes were black and left small crescents on her high cheekbones, emphasizing the tiny freckles dotting her creamy nose. The rosy glow in her cheeks may not have been fashionable, but Alex couldn’t help smiling at it – it said to him that she was a girl who liked life and liked people, a healthy girl who probably didn’t live in New York all year around. And when he shyly smiled at her, she gave a smile right back – a lovely smile, perfect white teeth in a wide, flexible mouth that also contained a hint of humor and sparkle.
She wore short white gloves and held a gray handbag and an opened but unread New York guidebook on her lap, and Alex, sharp-eyed and inquisitive, noticed that below her right glove encircling her creamy, slender wrist, was a gold bracelet, made of interlocking links … with a tiny ruby and gold lobster attached to one link.
A charm bracelet … with only a single charm on it.
Curious.
He carefully closed the magazine he’d been perusing on a desultory basis since Boston. It hadn’t held his interest … yet this girl, who’d been on the train when he and his parents boarded, had given him a friendly smile and he’d been peeking at her furtively ever since.
It wasn’t just that she was pretty; she also looked happy and excited. Compared to the other adults on the train, droopy-eyed and bored, most of whom didn’t even bother to look out the windows at the rushing scenery, this girl was alert, energetic; she looked as though life couldn’t be more exciting than this moment on the dusty train, as though she could hardly contain her joy.
Alex, who prided himself on being a New York insider, felt intoxicated, watching this older girl who seemed so thrilled with every fresh glimpse out the window, as the train roared toward the city. It would be, he decided, only a kindness to speak to her and give her a chance to express her wonder.
Trying for a careless demeanor, he said at last, “First time in New York?”
The girl turned to him. He’d half expected her to almost gasp with joy that someone had spoken to her. Instead, she gave him a quiet smile. It was the smile of a girl who was happy with herself and her circumstances – confident, warm, with a touch of humor sparkling in the lovely brown eyes. “Yes,” she admitted. “Could you really tell?”
Alex was thrilled that she had responded to him. She was certainly the prettiest girl he could remember ever meeting, and the first one of her age – she was as old as his babysitter, he figured – who seemed to treat him as though they were contemporaries. But he certainly wasn’t going to betray the thump of his heart. He managed a casual shrug. “Well, you know. The guidebook’s a dead giveaway.”
The girl looked down at it and gave him another smile – this one a bit rueful. “Mm. I guess I look just like a tourist.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t say that,” Alex said judiciously. He gave a fast look at her hat, dress and shoes. “No, you look like you could have stepped out of – the window at – uh – Altman’s or Reed’s. I mean, your outfit is really – you know – nice.”
She glanced down at it and then back up at him, her eyes sparkling. “Thank you. It’s new.”
“Yeah. Like I said. Nice.” Alex was running out of conversation rapidly. He glanced fleetingly over at his mother, seated in the facing seats behind them, who had not lifted her eyes from the magazine in her lap. Sometimes she joined his conversations, helped them along with a well-spoken observation or two. But today she seemed too absorbed in her magazine. She read down the page, turned it, read on.
Alex sighed. Then he looked at the girl again. She hadn’t made a move to pick up the open guidebook in her lap. Instead, she smiled at him encouragingly.
“I’m Alex Andrews,” he said. “My parents and I live in Westchester.”
The girl frowned slightly. “That’s – um – just north of the city. Isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. My dad drives in every day.” He paused. “We’ve been at our summer place in the mountains. But I’m going back to school on Wednesday, so – ” He shrugged.
The girl cocked her head and appraised him swiftly. “Starting what grade? Sixth?”
Alex felt flattered. “Fifth. But I guess I look older, huh?”
“Oh, you do,” she assured him solemnly.
When the conversation died, he made another effort, thinking rapidly and then pointing to the guidebook. “I guess you’re going to visit all the places it talks about.”
She looked at it, then decisively shut it, and won Alex’s heart completely. She put it down next to her, leaned back against the seat and said, “Well, I hope I will. I mean eventually. But you know how it is – once you start living somewhere, somehow you never get to do all the things you meant to when you first got there.”
She was talking to him as seriously as though he were a date, not a schoolboy. Nothing could have pleased him more. Alex didn’t like to admit, even to himself, that he had trouble getting along with his contemporaries; all the years of listening to his father’s legal analysis at the dinner table and his mother’s chatter about her clubs and organizations had rendered him, an only child, far older in his outlook than the other students at his exclusive elementary school.
And yet he felt completely at home with this girl – older in years though she might be, she also had a zest that he could share, and what seemed like a willingness to include him that warmed him.
He was so busy thinking of this that he didn’t realize she’d asked him something until she cleared her throat. Then he almost jumped. “What?”
“I said, what do you think I should see – I mean right away. You know. What should I make sure I don’t miss?”
“Oh.” There was nothing that Alex liked more than having someone solicit his opinion – something that had so far happened very seldom in his life. He enjoyed it even more for the rarity of it. And he added quickly, “I’d be glad to help with that.”
She handed him the guidebook, and he began to look quickly through it. Through his concentrated peering at page after page, he registered dimly that his mother had stood up, closed her magazine, whispered, “Mind your manners” to him and walked away, meaning he and the girl were left alone. Somehow he liked this even better, but he told himself sternly to focus on the guidebook. He stuck his fingers in the pages he thought were important, and finally, when he’d run out of fingers, looked up at the girl again.
“Here. You can put off some of the stuff till later, but I think you should see all these first.”
She moved over a little, inviting him to sit next to her, and he went back to the beginning of the book and showed her the first page his finger had marked. “Statue of Liberty. Gotta see that right away.”
“Oh, certainly.”
“And Rockefeller Center. That’s where they skate at Christmas time.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Times Square. And make sure you look at the statue of George M. Cohan.” He glanced up at her. “You know who he was?”
The girl smiled and hummed a few bars of “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.
Hm. She was smart, too. “Yeah, that’s right,” Alex said, a little begrudgingly. “He wrote all those great songs. Even `Give My Regards to Broadway’.”
The girl obligingly hummed a few bars of that.
This was getting out of hand. If he didn’t stop her pronto, she’d be singing and dancing right in the aisles here. These tourists …
Quickly he went to his next finger-marker. “Tavern on the Green. In Central Park. A great restaurant for Sunday brunch.”
At this, the girl’s creamy nose wrinkled. “`Brunch’?”
Alex gave her a tolerant look. “Kind of a New York specialty. Combination of breakfast and lunch on Sunday mornings. Usually starts around 10 and goes on for hours.”
“Sounds like a big meal.”
“Oh, yeah – pancakes and eggs and coffee and lox and bagels and – ”
“Whoa!” The girl made a laughing gesture, holding up both hands in a stop sign. “You lost me. What are lox?”
“Smoked salmon. You put it on bagels with cream cheese … it’s to die for.”
The girl looked almost as though she were having trouble controlling a full-blown burst of laughter, but she managed to compress it, so for a moment her mouth looked wrinkled. The next moment she had smoothed it out, and only a hint of her amusement remained, in the upturned lips and sparkling eyes.
Alex hadn’t noticed. Feeling unusually important, he turned to the last page he had marked – with his pinky – and pointed at a large black and white photograph. “And you definitely gotta visit a nightclub. New York is famous for them, you know.”
The girl leaned over to look at the photo, a swirling mass of tuxedoed men and ladies in cocktail dresses and corsages, dancing in an elegant profusion. “Is that the best one?”
“Sirocco? Yeah, one of them. But maybe I’m a little prejudiced.” Alex straightened a little to give her the coup de grace, something he knew would impress her. “My dad does a lot of work for the owner. So we’ve been there a lot. Very elegant.”
She looked at him respectfully. “Your parents take you to nightclubs?”
“Oh, sure.” Alex carefully closed the guidebook and handed it back to her. She was looking at him with definite interest, and he wanted to prolong that as long as possible. “My dad’s a lawyer. All show business stuff. That’s his specialty. Television, nightclubs, Broadway. Lots of contracts and stuff. He’s always busy. And sometimes when he has to get something signed, we go with him over to Scirocco. They always treat us nice there – thick steaks, a great ringside table, great view of the floor show – ”
“Floor show?”
Alex sighed inwardly. She was such a pretty girl, but really, so ignorant! How could she not know this stuff? Everybody knew what a floor show was, didn’t they?
Just as he was preparing to give her a very simple explanation – people who didn’t know what a floor show was probably needed it explained in small words – his mother returned, and one look at her face and Alex sighed. He knew he was about to be removed from a very pleasant environment.
“Alex,” his mother said, smiling at him but with a look in her eye that he knew only too well, “why don’t you take a walk and stretch your legs a little? You’ve been sitting very patiently for a long time.”
“Aw, Mom!”
“Go on.” Gently she shooed him away.
“Can I go to the next car?”
She glanced at the swaying door. “Oh, I suppose so. Just be careful. And remember, we’ll be in the station in a little while, so don’t go too far. I need you to help me carry some things.”
Alex looked at the girl. He hadn’t even asked her name, he thought belatedly, and now he has to leave her! He sighed. The girl gave him a smile as though she knew what he was thinking.
As he trudged up the length of the train, his expressive face set in a scowl, his mother slid gracefully into the seat opposite the girl and smiled at her graciously. “You’ve been wonderful with him. Thank you. Alex isn’t always easy to keep occupied.”
The girl smiled back at her, an uncomplicated, easy smile. “He’s been so helpful. He’s made me feel so much better about coming to the city.”
Mrs. Andrews raised beautifully arched eyebrows. “Your first time?”
The girl nodded. Then her nose wrinkled again as she said lightly, “I guess you really were reading your magazine, then. I thought you might have – er – overheard some of my conversation with Alex.”
Gloria Andrews looked up quickly in surprise. She too had noticed the girl when they first boarded the train – in conspicuously new and expensive clothes that the girl wore self-consciously, as though not used to that level of elegance. Mrs. Andrews was an expert on fashion, and almost as expert on the hearts and minds of young girls like this. She knew that lovely new clothes lifted a girl up, especially a girl not used to owning them. With little more than a swift glance at this girl, she had placed her as a first-time visitor to the city, probably from a small town, new to the nuances of New York, and yet a girl who had an innate sense of style and assurance.
And now, she also realized, she was a girl who saw a good deal more than others her age.