Hap had known Charles Lindbergh in passing from the barnstorming circuit and was inspired by his acquaintance’s heroics (and newfound fame and worldwide admiration) for his solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. Hap wanted the same glory for himself. Unfortunately, the target kept moving, the more attainable goals snatched up by those quicker on the draw. By 1931, the only big flying feat left was to fly nonstop across the Pacific, and Hap was preparing to do just that when he crashed while training in the spring of that year. He’d lingered near death for a week afterward. No one was sure he would wake from the coma. But he did, and with his right leg in a cast, he retreated to mend at Oakhaven.
That’s where Vivian returned to his orbit and he to hers. For her, seeing Hap again that summer was like setting a lit match to a pile of dry leaves. Vivian’s father had just died. She was lonely, vulnerable, and full of longing for things she didn’t quite understand. And miracle of miracles, Hap seemed to have finally noticed that she existed.
It had started out harmlessly enough—small flirtations at the dinner table, making eyes when they thought no one was looking, stealing into a corner of the parlor to have hushed discussions about records or movies. Due to his injuries, he spent long idle hours parked in chairs and sofas around the large house with nothing to do but entertain Vivian with tales of his exploits. They chatted, and they did perfectly innocuous things like play cards and backgammon.
Hap treated Vivian like an adult, and as the summer went on, she caught him looking at her with more than friendly interest. She wasn’t used to that sort of attention—not from a respectable man, anyway. He was worldly. He was mature. He flew airplanes and got himself hurt in spectacular crashes that made the newspapers. He was dashing and brash and made her laugh. And he made her forget sometimes that her father, the only person who’d ever really understood her, had left her for good.
Vivian had always been half in love with Hap, and that was before she laid eyes on him again that summer. By the Fourth of July, she was a complete goner. Her aunt and uncle had held a party full of polite revels, illegal liquor, and fireworks at midnight. Vivian hadn’t had a chance to speak to Hap all evening, and she could feel herself tense all over. Waiting, watching from afar as he flirted with other women, older women, worldly women with knowing eyes. She longed to pull him off into a quiet corner. Jealousy was an unfamiliar feeling. She was used to having him all to herself.
Then she found Hap in the boathouse, sitting up by himself long after everyone had gone to bed, staring morosely out onto the still, moonlit waters of the lake. The dock glowed a muted white in relief against the black water. The rowboat tied below emitted an erratic thump thump as it bumped the dock, and the breeze stirred the leaves of the tree just outside. This boathouse was the closest Vivian had ever come to having a tree house. The bottom level was at water’s edge, but the top was among the trees, the front open to the air facing the lake.
Her heart leaped at the sight of Hap. Here in the dark, just the two of them. Her heart fluttered madly in her chest. He glanced over his shoulder at her approach with a frown that didn’t abate even when he recognized his visitor. He turned back to his view of the lake without speaking.
“What’s with the frown, sourpuss?” she said, walking toward him.
Hap glanced at her again and smiled slightly, but said nothing.
“You want to be alone. I’ll go,” she said.
“No,” he said quietly. “Stay.”
Vivian’s heart hammered in her chest. She stood silently for a moment, afraid to move, afraid he’d change his mind and tell her to leave after all.
“It’s just that…” He began and then stopped. He hitched in a breath, turned, and cocked a dark brow at her. “Vivian, my dear, I think I’ve just realized that my life is not going to amount to a hill of beans.”
Vivian walked toward him again and stopped behind him to rest her palms on the curved wooden back of the chair. She matched his matter-of-fact tone. “Now what would make you say something foolish like that?”
He exhaled slowly and rubbed the palm of his hand down his uninjured leg. Then he leaned down and picked up a bottle that had been sitting next to the chair. He held it up to her by the neck. She grabbed it and took a swig without bothering to glance at the label. Whiskey. She coughed as it burned its way down her throat and handed the bottle back to him. He took a swig himself and settled back into the chair.
“One wrong move,” he said, pointing with the bottle toward the plaster cast on his propped-up right leg. “And I’ve missed my one and only opportunity for glory.”
Vivian made a pfft sound through her compressed lips. “Surely, that Pacific jaunt can’t be your only opportunity,” she said. She looked down at the crown of his head and resisted the urge to run her fingers through that thick, dark hair.
“It can. And some other lucky fellow’s going to make that flight and grab the headlines.”
“So find some other glory,” she said.
He tilted his head back to look up at her, his head resting against the back of the chair. He was dashing even upside down, she thought. A wry smile curled his lips. “Ah, said with the unwavering confidence of someone young enough to think it’s that easy.” Hap’s tone was light, but Vivian couldn’t mistake the bitter edge to the words. His eyes held hers. His wry smile faded, and her fingers trembled on the back of the chair.
Then slowly, ever so slowly, as if he were a wild animal she didn’t want to startle, she leaned forward and slid her fingers down the lapels of his dinner jacket. She paused. She felt his heart thump under her left palm, steady and sure. He tensed under her fingertips, but he didn’t move, didn’t look away from her. She leaned down further, planting her lips close to his ear. “I think you could have whatever you wanted, Hap Prescott,” she said breathlessly. She felt his sharp intake of breath in response, felt his warm exhale against her cheek, but still he didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He smelled exotic—of spice and bay rum and good Cuban cigars.
They remained motionless like that, two statues in the moonlight, for a long moment. Taking shallow, matching breaths. Then his good left hand reached up to rest atop hers over his heart. His thumb stroked her skin lightly. Neither of them spoke as Vivian moved to the front of his chair and slid gracefully into his lap, careful not to jostle his injured leg. She plucked the whiskey bottle from his hand and placed it carefully on the floor beside the chair. Then she hooked one arm over his shoulders and slipped the fingers of her other hand into the slick pomaded hair at his temple.
His good arm stole around her waist, and she pressed her body against his. She ducked her head and nuzzled into his neck. She inhaled deeply of his spicy scent and then impetuously kissed the rough, stubbled skin there. Her lips slid up to his chin, planting warm openmouthed kisses all the way up the length of his neck. She kissed over his roughly stubbled chin. Then she kissed his mouth.
He returned her kiss at first as if it were merely the polite thing to do, his good hand stiffly glued to her lower back. But Vivian didn’t want politeness or obligation. She’d seen the way he looked at her. He wanted her too, and she knew it. She pulled slightly away.
Suddenly, it was like some interior spring had uncoiled, and he was kissing with such enthusiasm that she was bent backward. His hand wandered up her back and then down under her skirt, toying with the clasp of her garter. Their breathing grew ragged, their kisses frantic. She pulled the length of his untied bow tie away from his collar and flung it to the side. Her fingers found the buttons at his collar and started to flick them open, one by one. Then he jerked his mouth from hers, turning his head away. He very carefully removed his hand from under her skirt and held it up in something like surrender.
“What is it?” she asked breathlessly.
“We shouldn’t,” he said. Then he turned and focused his intense green gaze on her. “I shouldn’t.”
She knew wha
t he meant, of course. He shouldn’t, because she was young and naive and he didn’t want to take advantage of her. She ducked her head again and smothered a laugh in the creamy linen of his half-open shirt. She might have been young, but she was not naive. Nothing could be further from the truth, she wanted to say. Instead, she ran one fingertip up the skin at the base of his throat, along his jawline to his earlobe. She traced the shell of his ear with her fingertip. Then she pulled away from him, cocking her head to the side and leaning back, her fingers laced together at the nape of his neck.
“Are you sure?” she said. “Because I wouldn’t mind being seduced.”
He blinked, momentarily shocked by her boldness. A tight smile flashed across his face and was gone. “I’m sure,” he said.
She didn’t know whether he meant that he was sure he shouldn’t seduce her or sure that she wouldn’t mind it if he did. Maybe both.
She watched his face for a long moment, trying to read the intent there, if he had any. Then slowly, oh so slowly, she extricated herself from the comfort of his lap. She felt his fingertips trailing down her hip as she moved away. She said nothing more, just walked away down the stairs and wandered off toward the house, the crickets chirping in the darkness. She was sure he watched her go. She wasn’t embarrassed at her boldness. She knew what she wanted. She knew what he wanted, regardless of what he’d said. That was just her first salvo. Vivian waited an hour before launching her second.
She picked her way through the dark woods to the guesthouse where Hap had taken up residence. And when she knocked on his door, Hap didn’t turn her away. He’d said that he shouldn’t, not that he wouldn’t. And then she’d crossed that threshold, and they had moved their flirty, forbidden exchanges forward into the land of no return.
Now, of course, she realized that Hap had been playing her like a fiddle. It had all been so carefully orchestrated. He’d gone to the boathouse because he knew she’d show up there, and he’d have her alone. He fed her those sad-sack lines about missing his chance as a way to gain her sympathy, to make her want to soothe his fragile ego. And he knew full well that pulling her in and then putting her off would make her want him all the more. It would seem like all her idea to go after him, and perhaps that soothed his guilt over his seduction of a girl too young to know any better. And it had worked like a charm. She’d thrown herself at him, and he’d caught her with open arms. It had all been a game. And she’d bought it.
But she wasn’t as naive as all that even then. She’d known the affair with Hap was wrong, and she’d done it anyway. Hell, maybe that was the only reason she had done it. She knew that it couldn’t possibly end well, despite her foolish romantic notions. No, the truth of it was that she’d wanted it, she’d wanted him, and she’d be damned if she’d regret that, especially now that Hap was gone. Gone. He’d been a cad and a bounder, but he’d been her first real love. And despite how things had ended, she’d always liked knowing that he was out there somewhere.
But Hap was no longer in the world, was he? That bold, incorruptible life force had been snuffed out. Quite possibly because of her.
“Miss Witchell?”
Vivian looked up to find a policeman looming over her, notepad in hand. “We’d like to take your statement.”
She was numb. Yet she felt herself nod, felt herself rise. Then her knees buckled, and she sat back down again hard. Her teeth rattled. Gwen’s hand was on her shoulder.
“Are you all right?” the girl asked.
Vivian shook her head, and as she did, the ice in her mind began to thaw. Oh God. Her statement. The police wanted her statement. She thought again of that terrible night at the radio station when she’d found Marjorie Fox’s dead body in the lounge. She’d had to talk to the police then too. Now, like then, Vivian was the only witness. Except with Marjorie Fox, Vivian hadn’t seen the murder committed, and the man she loved hadn’t been directly involved. She looked down at her trembling hands. She couldn’t tell them what she’d seen. But she had to tell the police the truth, didn’t she? Hap was dead, and the truth looked so terrible for Charlie.
She stared down at her shoes, which were stained green from the grass. Green like Hap’s eyes. She suddenly felt like retching. She placed the back of one hand against her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not feeling well.”
Gwen squeezed her shoulder. “Would you like another drink?”
“No, I-I think I’d like to lie down for a while.” What she really wanted was time. Vivian needed time to think, time to phrase her statement in a way that wouldn’t be so incriminating for Charlie.
“This has all been a bit much for Vivian,” Gwen said, addressing the policeman. “She’s probably in shock. She needs medical attention.”
“No,” Vivian said, more forcefully then she’d intended. “I just need to lie down. That’s all.”
She looked at Gwen, noting the genuine concern in her cousin’s face, and then up at the policemen.
“Just a few minutes,” he said. His tone was softer, and Vivian realized she must really look ill. “We’re not leaving here until we talk to you.”
“There will be no questioning of my client until I’ve had a chance to speak to her.”
Vivian whirled and found Freddy striding up the lawn toward them, his distinguished face set in determination. Vivian exhaled and unclenched her fists. Thank God for Uncle Freddy, she thought. She’d never been so happy to see someone in her life.
Chapter Five
Freddy had coached Vivian on her statement to the police, and she’d given it under his watchful eye at the house. He was adamant that she not tell them exactly what she saw—so she did not tell the police that she saw the scissors in Charlie’s hand—only that she saw Hap fall to the floor. It felt wrong to tell a carefully orchestrated version of the truth to the authorities, but what else could she do? The truth would incriminate Charlie.
Freddy had gone ahead to the police station to see Charlie, and Vivian had followed an hour later. The police and fire department shared space in a nondescript brick building on West Main Street that, until very recently, had housed a garage and car storage. She’d worn her sun hat to shield her face from curious townsfolk, but no one so much as glanced in her direction. Vivian walked right through the station’s front door.
Freddy was waiting for her in the small lobby. A jowly policeman watched them from behind the front desk.
“How is he?” she asked, breathless with nerves. She imagined Charlie huddled in the corner of a cold, dank cell, his eyes trained out the tiny, barred window at the blue sky of freedom beyond. She had to get him out. She just had to.
“He’s holding up well,” Freddy said. “As well as can be expected, anyway.” He reached out and awkwardly patted her shoulder. He let his hand rest there for an instant, warm and comforting, before he removed it. Vivian wished he’d put it back.
Freddy had known everything her father had done—everything he’d been capable of—and had never said a word until Vivian had uncovered everything herself over the past Christmas holidays. Freddy had been forthcoming when she’d asked him point-blank about what she knew, but it had been too little, too late. How could she trust a man who could keep things like that a secret? Then again, how could she not? She had no one else, and Charlie was in serious trouble.
“Can I see him?” she asked. She glanced at the policeman, who was not bothering to hide his interest in the proceedings. Frankly, it surprised Vivian that Lake Geneva even had a police station. The only crime likely committed here with any regularity was wearing white after Labor Day.
“You can see him for a few minutes.”
“Oh, thank God.” She started moving forward toward the doorway that she imagined led to the dank, dreary cells in the back. Freddy put a hand on her arm, stopping her in her tracks.
“Hold on just one moment, Viv. There are a few rules.”<
br />
She sighed. Of course there were. Hang the rules; she just wanted to see Charlie. If she could just see him and look into those beautifully honest blue-green eyes, she would know he was innocent. Because he had to be innocent, and there had to be an explanation for what she saw in that game room. Charlie was the only one who could tell her what it was.
“There will be an officer in the room with you, and for your own good—for Charlie’s own good—I advise you not speak of what’s just happened.”
“Not speak of it? How can we avoid it?”
“I understand it’s the elephant in the room, but I don’t want either of you saying something that might be used against him. Even in passing. I, of all people, know how innocent words can be twisted in a court of law to imply guilt.”
A court of law, Vivian thought. Please never let it get that far.
“I need to know what happened, Freddy,” she said. She leaned in and whispered, “I need to know that what I saw wasn’t the truth.”
Freddy locked eyes with her for a moment and then nodded. “I understand. Charlie’s told me his side of the story, and after you see him and assure yourself that he isn’t being mistreated, we’ll have a chat and I’ll tell you what he’s told me. Will that suffice?”
Freddy’s phrasing wasn’t terribly comforting. Charlie had told him his side of the story? Didn’t Freddy believe him?
“Fine,” she said. “No mention of the elephant in the room. Scout’s honor.” She held up two fingers solemnly.
“Okay, then. Chalmers here will escort you back.”
The man at the desk jolted to his feet as if he’d been dozing and awoken at the sound of his own name. The sickly lightbulb overhead buzzed and then started to flicker.
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