Chipped Pearls

by Helen Jacey

  She eyed me, checking the barrel of gun. ‘Relax. I know what I am doing. You know I am Floriana’s bodyguard? Not only driver.’

  She spun it around in her hand, like one of those cowboys in a movie. Just to make a point.

  I laughed nervously. ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ I blew on my nails.

  Zetty gave a cynical smile. ‘Signora Luciano need protection. ‘

  ‘Well, she’s a very wealthy lady,’ I said. ‘Could be a target for hoodlums? You ever had to handle anything like that?’

  Zetty didn’t look up. ‘I take good care of her. And Simonetta.’

  ‘When did you learn to play?’ I nodded at the trombone.

  ‘I play trumpet too. My father love jazz so I learn as a child. You play?’

  I shook my head. I couldn’t sit in here making small talk. ‘Hey, I think they’re serving tea in the dining room. Wanna come?’

  Zetty shook her head. ‘We eat in the kitchen. Dining room’s for guests only.’

  I blushed. Of course. The band weren’t guests, they were employees, if only for one night. And we were all quartered on the servants’ level, as plush as they were.

  I was halfway between a guest and an employee. Floriana had been okay with me attending the party—but she accommodated me in Zetty’s room.

  I stood up. Zetty looked up, twiddling the gun. ‘Your hair. It is like my friend’s. So you make me feel sad.’

  Like Dolly, again.

  I left the morose Zetty alone, and went back downstairs to grab a sandwich. I was starving and it was quite a few hours till things got started.

  I marched straight into the dining room. A few guests had arrived early, dominating the middle of the room. Five men, their backs to me.

  I recognized the type instantly. All had the unmistakable expensively tailored, unsubtle and swanky suits of the gangster brethren.

  Nobody else was around except Valeria the maid, setting out a salver displaying cakes on a corner table, obviously for the new arrivals. She kept looking at them warily.

  She finished what she was doing, then noticed me and gestured to a table. Then she wheeled her trolley through the double doors to the kitchen, pushing them open with her back.

  A man moved to the side, revealing a short woman standing with them. Her back was to me, as she chatted to a squat man in a black pinstriped suit and a fedora, the shortest and stockiest chap in the bunch. I couldn’t see her face.

  I didn’t need to. A shiver ran down my spine.

  Maureen O’Reilly.

  A nightmare come true.

  What do you do now? Run?

  Suddenly, the doors swung open, Alberta, Jewel, Carmen and Bertha came into sight, sitting around a small table inside the kitchen. There was another woman I hadn’t met before. She was tall, slim, wearing a red check shirt, and denim pants, her hair in a turban. She wasn’t laughing, unlike the others. She was staring at me, bemused. Was this Earnestine, the driver?

  A few caught sight of me. ‘Hey, Elvira! Get in here!’

  Alberta waved me in. Jewel called out, ‘No liquor, just tea!’

  Through the closing doors, I gave a fake smile and sent Alberta a in a minute gesture.

  Really, I wanted to throw up. Maureen O’Reilly turned around and grinned at me.

  Delight? Or malice? I couldn’t say.

  The double doors were now shut, closing off the view into the kitchen. The gangsters’ laughter now replaced the noise from the kitchen.

  I was alone with Maureen O’Reilly and a bunch of mobsters.

  Maureen broke away from them, coming towards me. They didn’t notice, lighting up cigars, heading for the table with the cakes.

  Run!

  ‘Well I never, if it isn’t Jemima Day.’

  43

  The serpent had snuck into paradise and she came with brittle green eyes and a lilting Irish accent, tainted with south London.

  Maureen O’Reilly. Here? In Santa Barbara, a million miles away from grim south London, didn’t make any sense. She didn’t belong here.

  Lauder’s warning, about my compatriots crossing the pond. And here she was.

  Maureen O’Reilly had been my first surrogate mother after Violet, my real parent, went AWOL. Maureen was on the periphery of a gang of female thieves, the Forty Elephants. Her bouts of drunkenness meant they couldn’t rely on her.

  Maureen found me begging on the Old Kent Road, filthy and starving, and took me in. At last she had found somebody more wretched than herself.

  To me, a street urchin, she had seemed like a goddess.

  It started out well enough. Maureen had a little basement flat in Manor Place, Walworth. The dirty kitchen windows were lined with empty gin bottles, out of which dusty dead flowers drooped.

  I slept on a small, moth-eaten sofa, luxury to me. She fed me, dressed me, even fussed over me a little. My pitiful clingy attachment to her felt like love.

  But as with all false goddesses, things soon went wrong. I came to dread the jolliness that came too quick, along with pink cheeks, and then despondent moods that lasted for days.

  The drinking sessions always ended up with the same tirade. Coming to England had been a terrible mistake, she would return to Derry. More angry lamentations about the men who had used and abused her.

  I got wary around her—one second I could be the scum of the earth, just another parasite feeding off her, the next I was the only person she could depend on.

  Relief came in the form of Maureen’s sister, Bernadette, who worked at a tearoom in Kennington. Bernadette would come around with ginger parkin and custard tarts that the shop hadn’t sold. I remember seeing concern in her eye for me, the charge of her drunken, criminally minded sister.

  How I wished Bernadette would take me with her each time, but she never did.

  In her sober state, Maureen was no Bernadette. I was merely a handy accomplice, one she put to work. I had to steal for my living and give most of what I’d pinched to her.

  Her one goal in life was to land a rich man. Until that happened, every day was an ordeal, for which more booze was the only consolation.

  I would spend hours trying to cheer her up. My stomach would be twisted in knots because cheerful Maureen had turned into a gloomy ogre. Would cheerful Maureen ever come back?

  Now, in Santa Barbara of all places, she was back, all right. But my infantile allegiance to her was long gone.

  Wearing a pink dress and a hat with paper roses, older and plumper, to a stranger she would seem a kindly type. She looked older than her years, the damage of booze.

  Her green eyes twinkled at me. ‘You know, we all thought you were a goner. And here you are safe and sound in California. Thanks to our blessed Lady—Mary, Mother of God.’

  Her eyes swiveled upwards as she made the sign of the cross. ‘How I prayed you were safe! All grown up into an elegant lady!’

  A dry lump lodged in my throat, waiting for the punch line.

  Sure enough, her thin red lips split into a coy smile. ‘There was a lot of readies on offer for news of your whereabouts, Jemima. If you’d like to stay looking so well, you and me need to have a little chat, don’t we?’

  I straightened my back and gave a hollow laugh. ‘Last time you saw me, the Old Bill pinched me and you let me take the rap. I was just a kid. I got two years in reform school, thanks to you. And now, all these years later, first thing you do is put the squeeze on me?’

  ‘Oh, no! Don’t say that! I’m over the moon seeing you safe. Look at you!’

  She sounded almost genuine. Was it possible she wasn’t the evil bitch of my memories? Had time softened her?

  Maureen went on. ‘I did time as well, duckie, if it makes you feel any better. I blame myself for not taking better care of you. But I was a drunk and I neglected you something awful.’

  Duckie. She used to call me that. She had regressed at the sight of me as quickly as me. I had pent-up grievances, while she had regrets.

  ‘But you can’t say I didn�
�t give you an education of a sort. Skills you can depend on. I bet they’ve come in handy once or twice over the years?’

  She was right. Maureen had taught me how to be a pickpocket, a con and a thief, and a whole lot more. Her favorite lesson had been how to play men. I was young, but the message stuck.

  There was also another irony to Maureen’s betrayal. Reform school led me to Gwendoline, my foster mother, the only person who had really cared for me.

  Maureen lowered her voice. ‘Do you realize who you killed back in London, Jemima? If the mob knew you were alive, they would have your guts for garters. I can get word out that I found out how Jemima Day died. But it’s risky for me, so it’s only right you make you make it worth my while.’

  This woman can destroy you. Don’t trust her.

  I glanced back into the dining room. The short, stocky guy looked like the muscle, hanging slightly back while the other men talked. ‘One of them your fella? The muscle?’

  ‘My Roberto works for the Colombo family. That’s him.’ She pointed to him. Proud wife.

  Colombo. The name meant nothing to me.

  She explained they had arrived in Los Angeles a few days ago by train from New York.

  ‘So what, this is a vacation?’

  ‘Oh, no! Stefano Colombo, that’s the tall one inside, he’s establishing the family business in Los Angeles. Given us a lovely home.’

  So they would be living in Los Angeles. Not good, not at all good.

  ‘And you know Mrs. Luciano?’

  ‘Gawd, no, duckie! I’ve just been dragged along for the party! A little perk. What are you doing here?’

  She wasn’t going to learn I was a private detective. Floriana wouldn’t let it slip.

  ‘Oh, I get beauty treatments at her salons.’ I lowered my voice. ‘It truly is the land of opportunity here. I dug up a golden nugget. A movie producer!’

  Roberto may have made an honest woman out of her, but Maureen would relate to a gold digger. One thing I knew about mobster hierarchy was that henchmen didn’t often get a share of the profits. I wanted Maureen to know I had means.

  ‘Why the new name? Elvira?’

  ‘Liked the sound of it. Elvira Jones.’

  No way was she getting my surname. I leaned forward, lowering my voice. ‘I’m never going back to Blighty. I messed up bad. So I’d be glad of your help. Maybe we can come to an arrangement. I’ve got plenty of lolly.’

  She touched my arm. ‘It’s the best thing. I can keep you safe.’

  ‘Don’t say a word, not even to Roberto, until we figure it out. If anyone asks, say we just met.’

  She smiled. ‘Certainly. Mum’s the word.’

  ‘It’s gonna get pretty wild tonight. Say you and me have breakfast tomorrow? I want to hear all the gossip.’

  ‘I’d like nothing better.’ She smiled affectionately again.

  Maybe she had changed, and I should trust her to help me shake off the mob? If she could reinforce the lie Jemima Day was murdered, as she claimed, I could continue to live in peace.

  Don’t be a fool.

  ‘Seven o’clock, so nobody sees us? We can go for a stroll, a great way to start the New Year.’

  By the lake, I wanted to add, but didn’t. My mind was already making the leap.

  I should kill Maureen O’Reilly.

  44

  I remembered it like yesterday. My escape from a bitch of a prison warden, at Waterloo Station in London. I had been given probation, was being sent to a Land Army farm, but I had no intention of sticking it out.

  I fled to south London, to my home territory, seeking out Billy. Seeking answers, seeing payback. But my first stop was Betty’s, a dress shop. Betty was a Sicilian seamstress. I’d just wanted to look pretty again after five years of feeling squalid, and she helped doll me up.

  And it worked. Billy and I had a strange reunion, the same night as Victory in Europe.

  Maybe freedom went to my head. I slept with him but didn’t get any answers. He grudgingly offered some money.

  Then the killers came. They didn’t give Billy a chance, shooting him dead while I was hiding in the bedroom.

  So I shot them.

  One had been barely twenty. His dead yellow eyes still haunted me. I watched the life flood out of him and thought he was too young to die.

  It turned out he was too important to die.

  Betty was the only person who knew I was going to Billy’s. She would have seen my mugshot in the papers the next day, as an absconded parolee. And being Sicilian, she would hear in no time about the triple killing in the apartment above the pub.

  The law had no qualms about making it look like I had mown down the three of them. The fact of my running was enough to pin it all on me.

  To them, I was the deranged escapee, a desperate fugitive wanting vengeance. The wronged woman made insane through incarceration.

  Then I ran to LA, only to be busted by Lauder. He had contacted Scotland Yard and found out I was wanted for the triple murder as well as absconding. We did our shady deal. Instead of handing me over, I would work for him.

  Lauder told the British cops that Jemima Day was found dead in the Coachella Valley. That was supposed to nip in the bud any pursuit of me by anyone—authorities and underworld.

  The boy, Paolo Salvatore, was a mobster boss’s son. He’d been interned in a POW camp in Orkney, released the same week as me. The other man I had slain had been young Paolo’s muscle.

  Paolo Salvatore had been too young to die.

  But like with Maureen, it was him or me.

  Zetty wasn’t in the bedroom when I returned. Then I heard the shower running.

  I quickly pulled open the drawer in her nightstand. The revolver was still there. I shuddered. Could I really do it?

  I caught sight of something else, under the gun. A faded photograph. It was taken at a fair distance and showed a woman and a boy in front of a stone house.

  I peered more closely.

  Zetty? Incredibly, yes. Much younger and happier. She was holding the hand of the small boy with dark hair and olive skin, like her. He had to be about two years old.

  Zetty’s clothes were like those of a peasant woman on a postcard. Her hair was tied back under a headscarf. She wore an embroidered apron and a long gathered skirt.

  It hardly added up. Zetty was now a henchwoman and a member of an all-girl band.

  Why?

  The village houses were stone. Was that a minaret in the background? Billy had shown me pictures of Sicily. This didn’t look like the same place at all.

  I couldn’t waste time wondering about Zetty’s origins. I put the photo down, picked up the gun and checked the chamber for bullets.

  If Zetty had a long night and needed a longer lie-in, I could discreetly borrow it myself tomorrow.

  Maureen and I would promenade to the edge of the jetty. One quick bullet in the brain, and Maureen would be gone.

  There could be no evidence of her going into the lake. I’d have to strip her. Floriana’s alligator might appreciate a quick and easy meal. Take out special of vintage gangster’s moll.

  I would return Zetty’s gun, then leave.

  Who would care about a bodyguard’s woman going missing?

  Floriana wouldn’t, and she definitely wouldn’t want the sheriff’s men poking around her property.

  Maybe I could be the source of a rumor that Maureen was seen walking off the property, or paying one of the Mexicans for a lift?

  No. I couldn’t do that. Roberto might shoot everyone of them dead. They didn’t deserve to pay for my crappy past.

  The shower stopped running. I quickly lay on my bed, to look like I was resting.

  I was pathetic.My ruthless survival instinct was all bluster. I was lying to myself. How could I commit the cold-blooded murder of a woman who tried, however badly, to raise me for a while?

  Maybe people do change. Maureen was softer. She had been a bitter drunk. Now she had a guy who loved her.

  She
couldn’t have racked up many years of happiness.

  No. You have to do it. You or her!

  The bathroom door opened and Zetty entered, a towel around her head. She glanced at me. ‘Oh. You are back.’ Then she did a double take. ‘Are you okay?’

  I must have looked as sick as I felt.

  45

  That night, Wanda gave it everything she had for the assembled hundreds of guests. The band looked stunning on stage in their olive dresses, belting out their new repertoire.

  Wanda couldn’t regale the crowd with her patter as freely she could at Joyce’s. She introduced each song in a quiet and dignified manner and thanked the audience when they applauded. Even so, she still held the room of movie stars, movie producers, fashion moguls, gossip columnists, mobsters, and businesspeople in the palm of her hand.

  The Charms were awesome. But the boys were coming home and surely all-girl bands would have to make way. There wouldn’t be such demand for all-girl anything—bands, taxi drivers, factory workers—now the war was over. What would happen to all these women?

  Wanda had grit, looks, and surplus talent. She wouldn’t give up. She just needed to be discovered.

  I looked around at the crowd. Maybe somebody would be impressed?

  Most of the guests had come in from Los Angeles, some had come from Santa Cruz and San Francisco and others had even flown down from New York. Clearly this party was the place to be.

  The tent itself was like a swanky nightclub on the Strip. The canopy was lined with white satin, punctuated by enormous chandeliers. Around the sides, strings of white fairground lights resembled glowing ropes of pearls. Eight fake Corinthian columns supported hanging garlands of green and yellow flowers—daisies, roses, dahlias and olive sprigs—and elegant sprays of the same blooms stood on each table.