Hilary and the Beasts, Part 49

December 30th, 1930

It was all Hilary could do to focus on the matter at hand. Being backstage, especially in a huge, ornate theater like the Nixon, was like being home. The stagehands shouting orders, the actors rushing to their dressing rooms and costume changes, the everlasting scent of greasepaint, sawdust, and oil from the riggings, the pulsing energy. She’d missed it so badly. Once she and C.J dealt with Pavla and she reclaimed what was hers - including her husband - she would start looking for roles again. 

Her brother’s tap on the shoulder broke her reverie. “Sis,” he began as she watched the play where she’d held court for so long from the wings, “I have the record player ready. Borrowed the recorder and acetate album from a guy I know who works at KDKA. Just give me the signal when I get her out here.” His cleft chin turned down, his dark eyes growing serious. “Sis…if she tries anything or if things get ugly, leave. I’ll get the security guards. It’s not worth you being turned into a monster, or something worse.” 

“I’ll be fine, C.J. I need to do this.” She tried to peer into the audience. “The show is just about over. Are Doug and Betty there?”

He nodded. “They’ll be back here the second the show is over. Doug says he already called the FBI. He has in with people downtown. I told the security guards we might need some help dealing with Pavla. I suspect Francis and Jake already had their own suspicions after T.J Hunnicut went missing. They’d love to nail her to the coals.” 

The moment the last act concluded, Hilary stepped back and let the cast hurry off to the dressing room. She longed to talk to them, to ask them how the act went, to bask in perfectly-delivered lines and to discuss how to improve flubbed ones, but there wasn’t time. There was only one person she wanted to talk to now, and she had to catch her before she disappeared to the dressing room. 

Pavla was the last to step off-stage. She was instantly surrounded by admirers - all men, Hilary noticed in annoyance. Most of them were adoring stage door johnnies, but there were some older ones in there, too, including the show’s director Milton Elliot. He gushed at her in a way that made Hilary’s stomach turn, promising her a starring role in his next great magnum opus at the Nixon. 

That sickening piece of Eastern European wiener schnitzel stroked his chin with her sharp, glossy blood red fingernails. “Hold that thought, Miltie. I am going to New York first. I have been offered role in major new musical. It is supposed to be the biggest show on Broadway this season, one that will be watched by producers in London and Hollywood. Perhaps, I will get offer from MGM, Paramount. But,” she fluttered her eyelashes and gave him a simpering scarlet smile, “as you Americans say, keep me posted, alright?” It was all Elliot could do to not melt into a puddle right there…and all Hilary could do to not relieve the contents of her stomach at the nauseating display. She wished she hadn’t had that huge bowl of ham soup with Dad and her sisters before the show.

She drew in a breath and nodded at C.J in the wings, holding the record. It was now or never. Pavla’s admirers had finally dispersed in a cloud of disappointment and overbearing lilac perfume. This would be Hilary’s finest performance, and she knew her role. She stepped out of the shadows just as Pavla started to her room. 

“Hello, Pablum.” She smirked. “Fancy seeing you here. I thought you would have been in Europe, playing with your new husband and his friends.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing here? Jeff chose me. You need to get over that dependency on him.” 

“Are you sure about that?” She circled the woman with those exotic dark eyes, the auburn hair styled into perfect curls around her head. “I’ve made a few phone calls. An old friend here, City Hall there. Not only are Jeff Singer, Scott Sherwood, and Victor Comstock not in Europe, but they’re not anywhere. No one here or in London has seen them since last September. Which,” she added as she moved in closer, “was conveniently around the same time you came to me and told me everything Jeff owned belonged to you, including Jeff.”

Her own smirk remained fixed on her face. “Maybe I know something you do not know. Jeff bought a mansion…”

“For you?” Hilary chuckled, but it had a hollow sound. “My lawyer already checked that out. Jeff did buy a mansion, a quite lovely one, too, but he signed the deed over a month before he went to Europe. The day before he left, he told me he had a surprise.” Her voice caught as she realized what she was saying, but she tried not to let Pavla hear it. “It was for me. Jeffery bought the mansion for me. No wonder it has a rose garden, and that bedroom looked like it was designed for me. It was.”

Pavla narrowed her eyes, her scarlet lips now pressed together in raw fury. “Why should you have a mansion? You, who have always had everything she could ever want. Loving siblings, loving father, loving husband. Beautiful clothes and homes and producers falling at your feet. Why can others not have those things?” 

Her voice came out in a growl as she matched Hilary’s circle. “Maybe women who did not have your opportunities want that chance. Women who came out of the cesspools of Europe, who lost everything to war, to poverty. When you Americans were drinking illegal liquor and dancing in speakeasies, we in Eastern Europe were scrimping and saving to get on, giving our bodies and our souls just to survive..”

“Is that why you’re so interested in those lovely political groups I heard you joined?” Hilary made her hollow chuckle the most chilling sound possible. “Jeff found out about you and those groups, didn’t he? Scott Sherwood can break any code. He told me he broke codes in France and Spain during the Great War. And Victor Comstock was obsessed with the situation in Europe. He’s worried it might spill over into our country. We’re already dealing with our own rampant poverty here. We don’t need people like your Nazis and Fascists telling us how to live.”

Pavla raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it is not as bad as it sounds. Maybe those people work to make things better.” Her growl dropped even further as she pushed closer to Hilary. “Jeffery Singer and his friends threatened to expose me. He and Comstock already made those recordings for KDKA. I pulled my own strings, made sure they did not get played. Maybe I sealed them in that mansion, where no one would ever find them or their little records. And Sherwood,” she gave a chilling little chuckle of her own, “I made sure he will never again be able to meddle with that code-breaking ability of his, and that Comstock would never be capable of making those little speeches of his ever again.” 

She slowly pushed Hilary against the red velvet curtain. “Maybe I should silence you, too.” Pavla fingered her green glass bead necklace slowly, rubbing each bead slowly and possessively in a way that made Hilary shiver with revulsion. “You would make attractive red kitten in a pretty green bead collar and leash. I could sell you to pet shop in New York, or maybe keep you as my own playful companion. Your precious Jeff would never know. And I,” she whispered in Hilary’s ear, “would have everything you have. Everything I deserve.” 

“So that is how you do it.” It was all Hilary could do not to quake with fear. “You just turn anyone who gets in your way into animals.”

“The women, perhaps, and the men who annoy me. The men who can be useful, like Jeffery…I have other things I’d rather do with them.” She clamped her hand over Hilary’s mouth before she could scream and wrapped the curtain tightly around her body. “Yes, I think you’ll make a very nice kitten. I could say I find you in street, just a sweet little stray who needed a good home. I’ll sell you to pet shop tomorrow. You’ll find that many cat owners in Pittsburgh are not so hospitable as those who own theaters and mansions.” 

That was when she heard the record scratch…and C.J stepped out of the shadows. “Get away from my sister, Pavla!” he snapped fiercely as he held up the record. “We already know what you’re doing. We have everything right here!” 

“You sure did, ma’am.” Betty and Doug rushed over with two nearly identical men in plain, rather cheap suits and fedoras. “Move away from Miss Booth, Miss Nemcova. We’ve been after you for months.”

Doug nodded as Betty ran over to Hilary and C.J handed the record to one of the men. “All of those men in Europe and New York…the actors, the reporters, T.J Hunnicut…they vanished after having relationships with you. You coerced them into promising sexual favors or roles or both before they all suddenly and conveniently disappeared.”

“Jeffrey didn’t marry you because he wanted to, did he?” Hilary stomped over to Pavla the moment Betty got her out of the smothering folds of the red velvet curtain. “He married you because you threatened Sherwood and Comstock. You told him you’d hurt his friends if he went to the FBI with what they knew. He…” Her eyes widened as it hit her. “He told me. They told me. They told us. They’ve been telling us for over a year, but we…but I…well, I didn’t put it together until now.” 

She turned her fiercest, iciest glare on Pablum, writhing in the arms of the taller FBI agent. “Why did you do it? You destroyed all of them, and everyone in that household!”

“I had to.” She wasn’t struggling. In fact, she seemed oddly calm. “Comstock and your dear little husband were threatening to tell the FBI. I already got to Sherwood before they could finish the information. He had a close encounter with hired toughs outside of a pub.” She smirked at Betty. “Seems he was drinking over some silly girl who turned him down for a date and wasn’t thinking as well as he might have been. He went down so easily. I think, he does not want to be so smart anymore. The lady he wanted, she did not want him smart.”

Betty gave her ice right back. “Maybe she didn’t want him hurt like that, either! I love…” Her own eyes widened. “I love him, no matter how smart he is or isn’t.” Doug frowned deeply behind her. 

“You’ll never find him. Not the way he was. I’ll make sure of that.” She dug her high heel in the federal agent’s foot. While he was jumping around, she pushed towards the door. “You’ll never find any of them. By midnight tomorrow, you won’t find anything but animals…and I’ll get the man and the home that I truly deserve.” She melted into the shadows before C.J or the agents could reach her. 

C.J put an arm around Hilary as the security guards hurried in. “Are you all right?”

“Oh Hilary!” Betty finally broke out of her own shock and rushed to her other side. “She’s  the real monster! It’s not Jeff, or anyone in that house. It’s her! Did you hear her? I know what she did to Scott and Jeff…and I can guess she did it to everyone in that household.”

“Oh, I heard it, all right.” Hilary rubbed at her necklace. “She almost did it to me. I wish I could find whatever spellbook she used in Europe and consign it to the nearest trash incinerator. She needs to stick to acting badly.” 

“Miss,” the short, Irish-accented security guard joined them, “we’re sorry, lass, but we canna find Miss Nemcova anywhere. The FBI men are going to check her hotel, but she just…vanished.”

Hilary made a face. “She won’t be found until she wants to be found.” She turned to Doug. “Can you get the FBI men to the large mansion with the rose garden and greenhouse at the end of Mansion Row by midnight tomorrow? The one Jeff purchased. That’s where all this is leading.”

“Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve, but I’ll try.” Doug put a hand on Hilary’s shoulder. “Please, you heard that woman. She did something to Jeff and the guys, and she almost did it to you. I don’t want any more clients being turned into animals.”

“Oh, you won’t.” She smirked and waved Betty and C.J closer. “We need to go home and talk to Dad and Maple. Doug, call the police and the FBI. We have plans to make. Tell those agents that we have a line on Miss Nemcova, and we’re finally going to take down that Eastern European witch for good.”