After a long moment, Charlie pulled away. “Viv,” he said, his voice husky.
She settled her chin on his chest and looked up at him. “Yes?”
“Marry me.”
Vivian sighed, holding his gaze for a moment longer before lowering her forehead to his chest and closing her eyes. She felt the thump thump thump of his heart—rabbit-quick under his shirtfront. Why’d he have to go and do that? Why’d he have to ruin such a perfectly perfect moment?
“Oh, Charlie,” she said finally.
He pulled away from her.
“Don’t ‘Oh, Charlie’ me,” he said. He turned his back to her to lean on the rail of the pagoda. “I’m going to keep asking until you accept.”
He would. She knew he would. He’d asked her three times now, and it was growing increasingly more difficult to turn him down gracefully. She loved Charlie and she didn’t want to lose him, but she didn’t want to be anyone’s wife. Not now, and maybe not ever.
The proposals had started out as a joke, as things did with Charlie. “Behave, or I’ll make an honest woman of you,” he’d said in that growly voice that made her stomach turn inside out. The first time, Vivian had brushed it off with a giggle and by distracting him with a rustle under the bedclothes. But it was hard to ignore it when he’d repeated it the next morning. Then he’d started asking her seriously.
Maybe she should just accept. After all, an engagement was not a marriage. An engagement could last interminably, and maybe in time she would change her mind about marriage. If anyone could change her mind, it would be Charlie. He was practically living at her coach house anyway. What would change?
In fact, since that “Hollywood’s Unmarried Husbands and Wives” article had come out in Photoplay discussing star couples like Clark Gable and Carole Lombard acting as marrieds without the benefit of vows, the station’s brass had been pushing her not so subtly toward the altar herself. They’d had their sights set on her costar Graham for her, of course, but a series of diplomatic negotiations had convinced the powers that be that she and Graham were not destined to be more than friends and costars. Thank heavens that Graham felt as strongly about it as she did. Still, she knew she couldn’t avoid marriage forever. After all, it wasn’t good publicity for one of the station’s stars to be shacking up with anyone. The public wouldn’t approve if the truth about her and Charlie came out, and she knew it.
It was just such terrible timing. She was off to Hollywood tomorrow evening. This trip to Hollywood was big. She knew Charlie didn’t begrudge her her dreams, but she also knew—though he’d never admit it—that he was terrified that she wouldn’t come back. He was probably imagining that she would take the Super Chief to Los Angeles, ace the screen test, and be contracted to MGM on the spot. Then her movie career would take off, and she would forget all about Chicago. Forget all about him. Of course, she knew that would never happen, but no matter how she tried to allay his unspoken fears, his hackles still rose when the subject was approached. And when his hackles rose, he tried to pull her closer and did something silly like propose.
“Charlie…” She stepped forward and placed one palm lightly on his back. She felt him tense under her fingers. “You know I love you.”
“Do I?” He turned to face her.
Vivian exhaled slowly. She hated hurting him.
“I don’t carry this around for nothing, you know,” he said. He uncurled his fingers, and in his palm lay the loveliest little sapphire ring. It glinted even in the dim light inside the pagoda.
The breath caught in her throat. “Oh, Charlie,” she said, feeling her insides melt. Yes, she wanted to say. Yes, of course I’ll marry you. She opened her mouth, but her lips seemed incapable of making that one syllable. She swallowed. “You probably shouldn’t carry that around with you. What if there’s a hole in your shirt pocket and it slips through?”
She’d been joking, of course, to lighten the mood. But the attempt had obviously gone sideways. The vertical line appeared between his brows. He closed his fingers around the ring again and whirled away from her. He charged down the steps and away from her before she could open her mouth to explain. Yes! she wanted to call after him. But her throat had constricted. She watched mutely as he strode away, knocking past a gardener in his path. The man dropped his tools to the ground with a clatter.
• • •
Vivian stood in the empty pagoda for a few minutes, tapping her fingernails against the railing, and then when that failed to lighten her mood, she went back out to find Charlie. The musicians had set up on the lawn, and a few couples twirled about the makeshift dance floor. She kept her eyes trained for Hap, her stomach tied in knots at the idea of another confrontation.
She climbed the wide steps to the front porch. A few couples lingered there, speaking in hushed tones, holding drinks in relaxed grips over the railings, hovering precariously over the blooming pink rhododendrons below. Where had Charlie gotten to?
It wasn’t fair of her to string Charlie along like this. He was old-fashioned, and she knew that going in. If he wanted to get married, then she probably should. Because Vivian was starting to very much fear that it was marry Charlie or lose him. Charlie was an all-or-nothing kind of guy, and she’d much rather have the all than the nothing.
She entered the front hall and glanced perfunctorily through each room as she hurried down the main hall. No one in the parlor or the sitting room. But then she came upon a closed door. The game room. Closed. Echoes of a closed lounge door at WCHI sprang to her mind. What had lain behind that had been a dead woman. Vivian’s stomach knotted. She could still see the dead woman’s pale face—the eyes open and unseeing, the trickle of blood from her mouth. Vivian hadn’t thought of finding Marjorie Fox in months. Why would she think of it now? The quiet, possibly, and the same sense of malignant possibility that hung in the air. Vivian shook the memory away and slid the pocket door open without knocking. It opened noiselessly on well-oiled tracks.
The room was cast in bright sunshine. The curtains of the tall windows on the west side of the house were thrown open. Vivian blinked as her eyes adjusted and she saw the shapes of two men outlined against the blinding light. They were standing between the desk and the billiard table. One of them was Hap, facing her, and the other man stood before him, half turned away. They were struggling. No, not struggling exactly. The man turned away looked to be holding Hap upright. What exactly was she seeing?
Then the other man turned toward her. It was Charlie.
When he spotted Vivian, his eyes went wide. He held both hands up as if he was surrendering, and something shiny flashed from the fingers of his left hand.
Hap and Charlie in here together? Oh no. They could only be fighting. Grappling like two common street thugs in the game room of her aunt and uncle’s summer home. She took a step forward, intending to stop whatever nonsense these two had started over her.
Then Hap made a strange, strangled sound. Vivian’s body went numb as Hap’s eyes met hers and he sank slowly to the rug, the front of his white linen shirt stained bright red. Vivian was frozen in place, a faint buzzing in her ears. Her eyes locked with Charlie’s.
Charlie looked out of breath and slightly bewildered. Now she noticed the red on his upraised hands, and a bright smear of it across his white suit jacket. The shiny object fell from his fingers and clattered to the floor. She stared at the glinting metal on the rug, unable for a moment to make out what it might be. Scissors, she finally realized, and the blades were wet as well. With blood. Hap’s blood.
Oh God.
Oh, Charlie, what have you done?
It was only after she felt the grip of strong fingers on her forearm that she realized she’d spoken aloud. She turned to find Constance beside her, her slender face pale as death.
“He’s killed Hap,” Constance whispered. “That’s what he’s done.”
Charlie dropped to his k
nees beside Hap’s motionless form, pushing Hap onto his back. He stared at the stain covering Hap’s abdomen for a moment, his hands hovering just over the pool of bright red. His blue-green eyes were wild, his breathing harsh and erratic in the hushed silence of the room. He reached up and put two fingers against Hap’s carotid artery.
“Someone get a doctor,” Charlie said without looking up.
Vivian lurched toward the telephone on the desk, her fingers just about to close over the receiver when Constance fainted, her deadweight dragging Vivian to the floor with her.
Chapter Four
A small crowd stood on the lawn in silence and watched the ambulance pull away from the house by the unpaved service road. There weren’t any clamoring bells. There was no urgency. Vivian had finally wrenched herself from Constance’s prostrate form and made it to the telephone to reach the hospital, but Hap had died just after they’d loaded him into the ambulance.
Birds trilled in the trees under the constant whir of the cicadas. Vivian heard a child shout in glee from one of the docks down on the shore, followed by a muted splash. The band had packed up, and everyone except the immediate family had gone home. Charlie was gone as well. Vivian had only told the hospital that there had been an accident when she’d phoned, but the police car had pulled in directly behind the ambulance when it had arrived. They’d made a few inquiries and carted Charlie back to the station for questioning before she could so much as catch his eye, much less speak to him. Vivian had tried to go along, but they’d pushed her away.
She had reached the police, and then Uncle Bernard had burst into the room just as she was putting the telephone receiver back into its cradle. Constance had woken from her faint, and Bernard had shooed all of them, including Charlie, from the room with a terse “You shouldn’t see this.” Then he’d slid the thick, walnut pocket door closed. Bernard’s eyes had been feverish behind his spectacles, darting back and forth between Vivian and Constance. His usually pale cheeks had been flushed with color.
Vivian put her palms against her abdomen and pressed, trying to force down that terrible roiling ball of frustration and helplessness. She had to do something to fix this catastrophe. But what could she possibly do? Hap was dead, and it seemed Charlie had killed him. That’s what she’d seen with her own eyes, wasn’t it?
Uncle Bernard had climbed into the silent ambulance and gone with Hap’s body to the hospital. Or perhaps the morgue? Vivian had no idea where. They’d just gone. Her uncle had been gray, solemn, and unable to speak or meet anyone’s eye. Oh God. It was terrible thinking of these things. She sat down heavily on the retaining wall. The rough, uneven stones poked her through her thin dress, and she shifted. But maybe being uncomfortable was precisely what she needed right now. She needed to sharpen her wits. She needed to somehow make sense of this insensible thing.
Hap was a like a son to Uncle Bernard, she thought. She suddenly understood that look of feverish intensity. His surrogate son’s life had been pouring onto the thick rug of the game room, and there was nothing he could have done to stop it.
Vivian surveyed the scene around her. Servants were busy wiping away every trace of the party that had been in full swing only an hour before. The family stood in small clusters around the lawn. Lillian was weeping softly into David’s shoulder, and Bernard was off with Hap’s body. Adaline stood next to Constance as she spoke with the police, near but not touching. Vivian’s eyes swept over the scene again. No Gwen, she thought. Where could the girl be? She turned and looked back at the house, but nothing stirred. Vivian felt the adrenaline seep from her body. Her hands were shaking now, and her stomach was queasy.
Charlie had shot one dark, indecipherable look at her as the police led him away––willingly, not in handcuffs at least. Vivian had then placed two phone calls from the telephone in the front hall—one to Cal Haverman, Charlie’s detective father, and one to Freddy Endicott, her father’s old law partner and family friend. Vivian had no idea how she and Charlie had gotten into this mess, but Charlie would need all the help she could find to get him out.
Vivian watched Constance speak with the police. Constance’s eyes were red and puffed from crying, but her tears were gone now. Vivian couldn’t hear what she was saying, but her cousin was nodding her head vehemently. Constance had seen Charlie leaning over Hap’s prostrate form with blood on his hands, if nothing else. And that was more than enough.
Charlie had been angry. They’d argued over her refusal to marry him, and he’d stormed off. But had he been angry enough to stab Hap with scissors? Vivian tried to imagine a scenario in which that might have been the result. Charlie had left her and run into Hap in the library. Hap had run his mouth—about her. He’d said something truly horrible and crude, something very close to the truth. Charlie’s temper was already set to the boiling point, and something Hap said had sent him over the edge.
Vivian shook her head. No. That couldn’t have happened. No matter what Hap might have said, Charlie would never have killed him—murdered him in broad daylight in Vivian’s family’s home. Shoving a scissors into the man’s stomach. That was heartless. She shivered. That took cold, murderous rage, and the Charlie she knew just didn’t have that in him. Still, all she could think was that she could have stopped all of this if she’d just agreed to marry Charlie when he’d asked.
Someone pressed a glass into her hands. Vivian looked down at the amber liquid inside, likely whiskey. She took a swig without so much as sniffing at it first.
“Vivian, you don’t look well.” Vivian felt a small, cool hand settle over hers. She looked up and met Gwen’s worried eyes.
“I don’t feel particularly well.”
“I’m so sorry.” Gwen swallowed, her dark eyes flitting around and settling anywhere but on Vivian’s face.
“Me too.”
Gwen sat down beside her. She cleared her throat. “No, I mean…I did this. I set this all in motion. I… The surprise I mentioned earlier that I had for you. It was Hap.”
Vivian’s head jerked up, and she narrowed her eyes at her cousin, unable to speak. Hap had been Gwen’s big surprise for her? Why?
Gwen’s wide eyes searched Vivian’s for a moment before she continued in a near whisper. “I ran into him at David’s a few weeks ago and told him to come today. I told him you’d want to see him.”
An icy ball formed in the pit of Vivian’s stomach. “Why would you tell him that?”
Gwen bit her lower lip and looked off at the lake. “It’s just that when you told me about him, about you and him, it sounded so romantic. Like you were star-crossed lovers separated by time and forces outside your control. Well, when he came back to the States a few months ago, I started plotting to bring you two together again.”
“Oh, Gwen.” She was so young and such a hopeless romantic. And Vivian had told the story as she’d wanted it to be. Star-crossed lovers. She’d rewritten the past herself until she’d almost believed that’s how it had happened. How could she blame the girl for believing that tripe? Vivian shook her head, unable to say anything.
Her young cousin’s eyes flooded with tears. “It was so stupid and melodramatic of me. And I didn’t tell you of my plans beforehand because I wanted it to be as if fate had finally brought you back together. It would be just like in the pictures. You’d see each other from across a crowded room, and all would be forgiven. Well, I can see now how foolish that idea was. More than foolish…dangerous.”
Vivian said nothing. What could she say? Her cousin’s fool romantic notions had indeed set all of this in motion. But hadn’t Vivian really set it all in motion by telling Gwen a version of events that had been so clearly false in retrospect?
“I didn’t know about Charlie until you introduced us today,” Gwen continued. A single fat tear slipped over her lower lashes and slid down her flushed cheek. “I’m so sorry, Viv. How could you ever forgive me?”
“It’s…�
� Vivian wanted to say okay, to allay her cousin’s guilt, but it wasn’t okay, was it? Charlie might have killed Hap Prescott. And Gwen had been the one to bring those two men into each other’s orbits. “Charlie didn’t kill him,” she said instead.
Vivian stared out across the lake. A sailboat was stalled in the still waters near the middle, the sail limp. A young couple sat helplessly marooned, waiting for a breeze.
“Of course he didn’t,” Gwen said. She squeezed Vivian’s hand, but her voice quavered. She didn’t believe it, of course. Vivian wasn’t sure she believed it herself.
• • •
Hap was short for Happy. He’d been such a smiley toddler that everyone had called him that instead of his given name, Malcolm, and it had stuck. He was the son of Bernard’s closest friend, his mother a member of the lesser German nobility. He’d been an only child, doted on and spoiled beyond measure. He’d been twelve when his parents perished in a train accident.
With no immediate family to raise Hap, Uncle Bernard had taken him in as his ward. Hap had attended boarding school most of the year and spent his summers with the family at Oakhaven, where Vivian also resided during the summer months, usually without her parents. And so Hap had always been within Vivian’s sphere, if not always in the forefront. He was fourteen years older, and she’d looked on him with a sort of fawning hero worship—even before he’d actually become something of a hero.
He’d trained to be a pilot in the Great War when Vivian was still a toddler, lying about his age to join the service. But by the time he was ready to fly, the war had ended. Rum luck, he’d always said, to never have gone overseas, never seen action of any kind. He’d gotten a taste of adventure in the air corps and was loath to relinquish it.
So he’d turned to barnstorming like many of those other young men who’d been trained to do a job and then denied the chance to do it. He’d flown shows throughout the Midwest, performing dangerous stunts like barrel rolls and loop-the-loops. He performed aerial maneuvers that made spectators’ hair stand on end. Vivian had only seen one of his performances. A young man had walked on the wing and stood there braced against some sort of stand as Hap flew.
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