Diva

by Jillian Larkin

  Melvin stared at her with his tiny brown eyes for a few seconds, then sighed. “Oh, fine.” He held still so Lorraine could draw a thin mustache above his lips and a mole on his left cheek. It didn’t look too bad, if Lorraine said so herself.

  It was clear from Parker’s face that he didn’t agree. “That’ll never fool anyone.”

  “Not unless she’s blind,” Solomon agreed.

  “But that’s just it,” Lorraine replied. “She basically is! Clara and I saw this girl up close. She squints; she’s nearsighted.”

  Clara nodded in confirmation. “She’s right. Vain girls never wear glasses.”

  “If we keep Melvin here far enough away, she won’t be able to be sure he’s not this Benji jamoke,” Lorraine said. She looked at the others, ready to receive her praise for coming up with such a brilliant solution.

  Solomon took the photo back and glared at Melvin. “Even if she thinks it’s him, the moment he opens his mouth, she’ll know the truth. Benji has a serious Southern accent.”

  Lorraine waved him off. “The man’s name is Benji. How serious could his accent be?”

  “Serious enough,” Parker said. “But Clara’s going to do all the talking.”

  “What?” Clara asked, incredulous.

  They all looked up when they heard the sound of strings. The white-suited wedding band was seated next to the canopy and was starting to warm up. The guests took this as their cue to take their seats.

  Lorraine walked toward the aisle with the others trailing behind her. Her plan was good, she knew it was—even if no one else thought so. Plus, it wasn’t like they had time to come up with anything else.

  It was now or never.

  GLORIA

  Forrest mopped at his forehead with his handkerchief and used his other hand to offer Gloria his gold-plated flask.

  “Here, kid. You look like you could use it.”

  Gloria took in the stately wedding guests crowded around them in the Plaza’s marble-floored lobby. The debutante on her left fingered the feathered skirt of her peach gown and confirmed to a reporter that, why, yes, they were real ostrich feathers. On her right was a crowd of Marcus’s old prep school friends from Chicago, enthusiastically discussing Babe Ruth’s latest home run. The stately room—with its high ceilings and countless tall windows bordered by gold curtains—was packed to the gills with a rainbow of wedding guests dressed in the finest clothing that money could buy.

  When Marcus asked Gloria to be his “best girl,” Gloria had expected to wear the same flouncy dress as Anastasia’s bridesmaids. But instead, Marcus had commissioned a black silk halter dress with a white lace bodice. There was a black bow at the center of the bodice and a line of black buttons beneath it.

  Gloria took a swig from the flask. She and Forrest could’ve filled a novel with all the tabloid pieces that had been written about them. But they were practically invisible in this sea of New York and Chicago royalty.

  “You don’t look so great yourself,” Gloria replied, handing back the flask. Since she’d met him, Forrest had never looked anything but perfectly groomed. But now he was a sweaty mess. His nervous fidgeting had quickly loosened his pomade-tamed dark hair into unruly waves. Sweat dotted his brow, and he constantly tugged at his dark green silk tie.

  Gloria tried to let the booze relax her, but it wasn’t working. She could barely focus on the snooty guests crowded around them or the crystal chandeliers hanging above. When a waiter offered her a finger sandwich, she thought she might be sick.

  When she recognized a gaggle of Laurelton Prep graduates, she tilted her head downward and hoped they wouldn’t see her. They didn’t, but she did hear her name:

  “I wonder where Gloria Carmody is,” Anna Thomas said, twisting her unfashionably long brown hair between her fingers. “Do you think she got a job in another gin joint?”

  “I doubt it,” Helen Darling said, and slurped at her lemonade.

  “She’s probably off getting arrested again with her colored boyfriend,” Amelia Stone said. “Remember the way we used to look up to her? It’s positively embarrassing to think of it now.”

  On another day Gloria might’ve been offended by their barbed words. But now all Gloria could think of was Jerome, and how Forrest’s sadistic father had him locked up God knew where. Pembroke had refused to say anything about what he’d done with Jerome—only that he was alive. Alive was not necessarily synonymous with safe or unharmed. She couldn’t stop imagining Jerome’s soft brown eyes widened in terror, or his normally deep voice pitched in a cry for help that no one would hear.

  “Where is Pembroke now?” Gloria asked Forrest.

  “In the far right corner, by the vase of lilies,” Forrest replied immediately. His eyes hadn’t strayed from his father for a moment since they’d arrived at the Plaza.

  Gloria peeked over the many wide-brimmed hats and delicate headdresses. Pembroke stood as he always did, silent and imposing with his hands folded behind his back.

  He wasn’t playing the servant today—his black tuxedo was of finer quality than half the guests here. His black bowler hat pitched low over his eyes and made his garish scar less obvious, but Gloria could still feel his stare. When Pembroke made eye contact with Gloria, his lips peeled back to reveal a smile that was more of a sneer.

  Gloria tugged on Forrest’s sleeve. “Come on, I’ve got to join the wedding party.”

  They made their way through the crowd and under the domed ceiling of the Plaza’s Palm Court. Large tables were already set up with place cards and more silverware than one person could ever need for the reception that would follow the ceremony. Gloria and Forrest walked between the columns and began to climb the steps.

  “You don’t have to go with your father,” Gloria pled with Forrest under her breath. “You’re a better man than he is.”

  Forrest refused to look at her. “I have to help him. He’s my dad.”

  “Yeah, well, your dad is holding my fiancé hostage. And I doubt he got that scar rescuing small children.”

  “He’s not a good man, I know,” Forrest admitted. “But without him, I’m just another poor boy—no mansion, no musicals, no shot to win the heart of Ruby Hay worth.”

  “But you were planning to leave him,” Gloria said when they reached the second floor of the hotel. They walked quickly past the entrance to the ballroom, where several men and women mingled and smoked cigarettes. “You wanted to run away to Paris with Ruby,” she whispered. “What happened?”

  He gave her a bleak smile. “You happened, Gloria. How am I supposed to leave now, knowing you’ll probably turn my father over to the feds before my boat’s even left the harbor? I owe everything I have, everything I am, to my father.”

  They reached a long hallway. Gorgeous landscapes and portraits of women in elegant gowns hung between the doors. Gloria stopped walking and leaned against the wall. Her bare arm brushed up against the rough texture of the painting behind her. From here she could see the ballroom entrance to their right and the stairs beyond it. Pembroke was nowhere in sight. “What happened between you and Ruby? She said you two were planning to elope when you were younger.”

  Forrest stopped as well and leaned on the wall beside her, a gold candelabra sconce right above his head. “We were seventeen,” Forrest said in a dreamy voice. “Even before she was onstage, a spotlight seemed to follow Ruby Fredericks everywhere she went. I could hardly believe my luck, that a girl like that would even notice me, much less love me back.”

  “Why, though?” Gloria asked. “You’re a charmer, Forrest, and you’re not too horrible to look at, either.”

  Forrest frowned as the memory slipped away. “I was poor. And to people in Ruby’s world, that was all that mattered.”

  Gloria could understand that. Even if Jerome had been white, her family never would’ve accepted her love for a penniless piano player.

  “She said the money didn’t matter to her,” Forrest said. “But it did, in the end. Money kept her from running
away with me, and sent her straight into the arms of that block of wood, Marty. I was so angry with her at first. But then I realized I couldn’t blame her. I had expected her to walk away from everything she’d ever known. All the little comforts she’d grown so used to would be gone.”

  Gloria flinched at the heavy sadness in Forrest’s voice. Ruby wasn’t as blameless as he claimed, Gloria didn’t think. Giving up a life of comfort—that was exactly what Gloria had done to be with Jerome.

  “I didn’t know my father back then—he left my mother when I was only seven. All I knew was that he was a shady businessman, that my mother expected better of me. But Ruby left me, and my mom died not too long after. I didn’t have any brothers and sisters—my whole life it had just been my mom and me. I’d never been so alone.”

  His voice broke on the word alone. Gloria’s heart twisted.

  “I had no choice but to track Dad down. I found a few of his letters that Mom had never given me, and went to the return address. He took me in, brought me into his insurance business.

  “I didn’t have much of a head for the work—numbers and I don’t get along so well. Which is why I didn’t realize until it was too late that my father was engaged in ripping off thousands of people.”

  So Forrest was innocent. And he’d only sought out his father because he’d been backed into a corner. Gloria knew from experience that desperation had a way of glossing over red flags where money was involved.

  Gloria looked over at the ballroom entrance and saw that everyone milling around it had gone inside. “We’d better get going.” She walked fast down the hallway, her heels sinking into the fluffy peach carpet. “Is Pembroke even your father’s real name? ”

  “It isn’t, but I’m not planning on telling you what it really is.”

  “Is Forrest Hamilton your real name? ”

  “Yes. Hamilton was my mother’s maiden name.”

  For some reason it made Gloria feel better that she knew Forrest by his real name. “So Pembroke got caught?”

  “Only after he’d illegally made enough money to buy this hotel a dozen times over.” Forrest gestured at the chandeliers they passed under and the crystal doorknobs that probably cost more than some people’s houses. “When the cops came to arrest him, we fled across the country and made new identities for ourselves. I convinced my father that we could hide on Long Island. Ruby was in Manhattan with her new husband, and I wanted to be close by while I became the man she needed me to be.”

  “She needed you to be a criminal?”

  “She needed a man who could take care of her.” Forrest’s expression grew hard. “The feds never came looking for me—they just wanted my dad. So I could pretend to be a high roller and disguise my father to keep him safe. I invested in shows, laundering his money, all the while hoping Ruby might recognize my picture in the newspapers. Eventually she did, and she showed up at one of my parties.”

  The two of them stopped outside the last door on the left, room 219. Gloria knocked and looked back at Forrest while they waited.

  A smile had appeared on his face when he mentioned Ruby, but it dissolved as quickly as it had come. “I can’t leave my father to the authorities, though, not now. If it’s got to be one or the other, I’ve got to leave Ruby behind.” He let out another world-weary sigh. “She probably would’ve changed her mind at the last second anyway. Dad’s right. She’d regret ruining her career for a punk like me.”

  “You’re not a punk,” Ruby said, surprising him. “Just an idiot.”

  Ruby stood in the doorway of room 219, looking stunning in a deep-purple sleeveless gown. Flowers were embroidered in silver thread all over the dress’s bodice. A rhinestone headband held Ruby’s luxurious waves in place.

  “Ruby, what are you doing here?” Forrest asked. He glanced anxiously down the hall in the direction he and Gloria had come.

  “Don’t worry, I think we lost him when we came upstairs,” Gloria said, following Forrest into the room and closing the door behind her.

  They walked into the parlor of a luxurious suite, complete with a gold chandelier, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a grand piano in the corner. There was a brown velvet couch in the center of the room with two matching armchairs on either side. Marcus sat on the couch in his tuxedo. His golden hair was slicked away from his face and showed off his sculpted cheekbones.

  Somewhere along the line, Gloria’s best friend had shifted from a prep school rake to a devastatingly handsome man. His golden skin glowed with a fading summer tan, and long, sooty lashes framed his arresting blue eyes. But when he grinned and his dimples sank into his cheeks, Gloria was still able to see the boy who’d first taught her how to sneak out her bedroom window.

  He rose from the couch and hugged her. “You’re finally here! Agent Phillips said he hadn’t heard from you since yesterday, so I offered to let him and his men wait for you in here. And then another agent brought Mrs. Hayworth in just a second ago. I loved you in The Girl from Yesterday, by the way,” he said to Ruby. Then he leaned in close and said in Gloria’s ear, “Something go wrong with that bureau business of yours?”

  “Maybe for a minute,” Gloria said. “I think it’s all on track now, though.” Marcus sat back down and she sat beside him.

  Burly men in black suits stood by the windows. They had the bored, slightly angry expressions Gloria had come to associate with FBI agents.

  “I’m glad you were finally able to pull this off,” Hank said. Special Agent Hank Phillips sat in one of the chairs. The handsome FBI agent sported his usual five o’clock shadow and skinny tie. He gave Gloria a half-smile. “Took you long enough.”

  Gloria looked back to Forrest, who clutched both of Ruby’s hands in his own.

  “What are you doing here? I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” Forrest tucked a dark curl behind Ruby’s ear and she leaned into his hand. They fell into each other’s arms and Forrest held her tightly, whispering, “Ruby, oh, Ruby,” over and over.

  Finally Ruby pulled away. “You let me walk away once—I’ll be damned if I let you do the same thing. I love you, Forrest. Let’s forget the past and start fresh in Paris.”

  “Only if you brought what was promised,” Hank cut in sternly.

  Ruby stepped away from Forrest and picked up the fat leather binder of papers sitting on the coffee table. She handed it to Hank. “It’s all in there, Agent Phillips. It’s not Forrest, it’s his dad. He’s alive—the two of them faked his death.”

  Ruby looked back at Forrest and gestured toward the binder. “I was scared when we were kids, but not of being poor. I mean, that was part of it. But mostly I was afraid to leave everything I knew—of losing my parents and friends from my life forever. But now all I’m afraid of is losing you again. I don’t care about your money or anything else, Forrest, I care about you.”

  Gloria leaned her head on Marcus’s shoulder and tried not to cry. She felt exactly the same way about Jerome, but wasn’t sure she’d ever put it as clearly as Ruby just had.

  But Forrest paled and his eyes narrowed at Ruby. “I trusted you! ”

  Hank set the binder on an end table, rose from his chair, and approached Forrest. “You were right to trust her. Special Agent Hank Phillips.” He extended his hand, but Forrest refused to shake it. “Listen, if everything checks out according to what Mrs. Hayworth has told us and you agree to be a witness against your father, we can reach a deal whereby you serve no time.”

  “I can’t believe this!” Forrest exclaimed. He turned to Ruby; he didn’t look angry so much as desperate. “You ran out on me once, and now you’re sending my father to jail? How could you betray me again?”

  Ruby put a hand on either side of his face. “No, this time I’m giving it all up for you,” she said calmly. “I’ve already told Marty I’m leaving him.”

  Forrest raised his hands to cover hers. “What about your career, and the money?”

  “I don’t care about any of that! All I care about is you.”

&nb
sp; Forrest stared into her eyes for a few long moments. He looked pained and elated all at once. “But he’s my father,” he said, his voice tight.

  “He’s a dangerous thug who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. The only reason anyone could call you a criminal is because he forced you to become one. You don’t belong with him. You belong with me.”

  “My father’s been there for me all these years, Ruby. Unlike you. Now you want me to repay him by selling him out to the feds? All so I can go to Paris with you? How do I even know you won’t just run off on me again when we get there?”

  “I won’t, I promise I won’t,” Ruby said fiercely. “I’ll be happy as long as we’re together. Please, Forrest.”

  Forrest was silent for several moments. Then his face crumpled. He jerked away from her. “Maybe you’d be happy, but I wouldn’t. Not knowing that my father is rotting in a cell and that the woman I love is the person who put him there.”

  With that, Forrest stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him. Ruby gasped and rushed out after him.

  Gloria looked at Hank. “Aren’t you going to go after them?”

  Hank flipped through the binder Ruby gave him. “You heard Mrs. Hayworth—Forrest’s father is the fish we really want.” He pointed to a page in the binder. “I knew there was something shady about that butler of his. Callum Morrison pulled off the biggest insurance scam this decade—I didn’t recognize him with the scar. And I didn’t even know he had a son.”

  Gloria put two and two together: Callum Morrison was Forrest’s father’s real name. Not Pembroke.

  Hank pulled a silver pistol from the holster on his hip and checked the bullets in the cylinder. Then he nodded to the men standing by the windows. Immediately the other agents checked their guns as well. “We’re going after him.”

  “What about Jerome?” Gloria asked, her voice breaking a little. “Pembroke said he had Jerome somewhere. I got you your information. You owe it to me to find him!”