by Ariel Lawhon
“Here.” She handed the second letter to Emma.
“What is this?”
“A fake ransom note demanding twenty thousand dollars for Joe’s safe return.”
“What?” Emma held the envelope away from her body as though it would burn her. “How do you know it’s fake?”
“Read it. Whoever wrote that thing copied the text from a dime-store novel. It’s a scam.”
“Are you sure? Who would do such a thing?”
“Someone who wants to make a quick buck off the grieving wife of a missing judge.”
“Well, what do you want me to do with it?”
“Give it to that detective.” Stella drew her feet out of the water and slowly stood up. Dizzy and nauseated, she reached out to steady herself on Emma’s arm. “And have Fred bring the car around.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to Irv Bean’s store so I can officially report my husband missing.”
“It’s all over the papers.”
“Exactly. I can’t have people wondering why I never reported it.” Stella threw the half-smoked cigarette into the lake. “I must keep up appearances, after all.”
“Pull yourself together, Stella. You’re not going anywhere until you give that detective a statement.”
Stella glared at the house. “Just send him out here.”
BILTMORE HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER 27, 1927
The crystal vase crashed to the floor, shards spinning across the wood parquet in every direction. An elaborate tulip arrangement lay tangled in the mess, buds broken and stems bent at unnatural angles.
“What in God’s name was that?” Joe struggled with his bow tie as he stumbled from the bedroom in the high-rise suite.
“The cat.” Stella pointed to a bushy-tailed orange tomcat that raced back and forth along the wall. His hackles were raised, and he hissed and spit as though batting away a predator.
“Your cat,” Joe said, correcting her with a stern glance. “I suggested we board him.”
“Chickie is our cat. And two weeks in a kennel would have killed him. Besides, it’s that stupid parrot next door. Can’t you hear it?”
Joe had arranged for them to stay in a suite adjoining that of Governor Al Smith and his wife, Catherine, while their new apartment was being finished. As a political move, it was genius, but it had proved a test of patience when it came to Chickie. The Smiths’ green parrot squawked so loudly it made their eyes throb and had a laugh so eerily human-sounding Stella often couldn’t tell whether she heard the bird or Catherine on the other side of the wall.
“Look at him,” she said. “It’s a wonder he hasn’t dug right through the wall to get that bird.”
“Put him in the bathroom, then. We need to get downstairs. Cocktails started ten minutes ago.”
It took several minutes before Stella cornered Chickie between a set of purple velvet drapes and a large armoire in the sitting room. She held him at arm’s length so he wouldn’t shed orange hair onto her black dress and chucked him into the bathroom.
“That cat is a menace,” Joe said, holding out his bow tie to her.
“He’s a darling.”
“He shit on the rug. Had to clean it up before the maid found it and complained to management. We’d be evicted.”
Stella flipped Joe’s collar up and ran the tie around his neck. She knotted it with nimble fingers. “The governor would never let that happen. Besides, I can only imagine what their place looks like. They don’t keep that bird caged. And Catherine told me the other day that Al feeds it straight from his fork.”
“They’re waiting on us.” He gave her dress careful scrutiny before finally offering his approval. “You look nice.”
Stella spun in a small circle, seeking his approval. But as usual, his gaze didn’t linger. “It’s Chanel,” she said, following him to the door. “Destined to be a classic, the salesclerk said—”
“I don’t care,” Joe interrupted, “as long as it was expensive.”
It was expensive. The latest version of the swing dress, it was long sleeved and sat low on the hips, with a pleated skirt and a hemline that hovered midknee. The dress was perfect for that night’s fund-raiser—sure to involve champagne and the Charleston. Stella dressed it up a bit with pearls, a small netted hat, and a sequined clutch.
Al and Catherine were waiting for them on the first floor in one of the smaller ballrooms adjacent to the Men’s Bar.
“Get ready, dear,” Catherine whispered in Stella’s ear, “they’ll end up in the bar before long.”
Bright and charismatic, Governor Smith had taken a liking to Joe years earlier. That interest had not waned since, and Joe could easily trace his meteoric rise in the political world to the near-constant attention given him by the governor. Al Smith was, at times, almost alarming with his penetrating wit and leprechaun eyes. But Joe had received his blessing and, for the time being, that was all that mattered.
Catherine took Stella by the elbow and steered her toward a small crowd of political wives that stood by the window and nibbled hors d’oeuvres. Shrimp cocktail and stuffed mushrooms. Rolled prosciutto and Brie. A cornucopia of cheese and crackers. Caviar and grapes. Most of it sat untouched on the buffet. Every now and then, a woman plucked a grape from the bunch or ate half a shrimp.
“Aren’t they hungry?” Stella whispered to Catherine.
Catherine laughed and bent close to Stella’s ear. “They’re waiting for us, dear. Grab a plate. Start a trend.”
“Us?” Stella understood why the women would wait to eat until Catherine arrived. She and Al were hosting the fund-raiser, after all. But she couldn’t grasp how she fit into the equation.
“You are my special guest tonight.” Catherine lifted a delicate saucer from the stack and made her way down the buffet table, taking a small sample of each offering.
Stella followed her lead, and one by one, the political wives of New York City fell into line behind them.
That night, like so many that came before, was a blur for Stella. Champagne and music and robust speeches punctuated by periods of dancing. Joe worked the crowd, never attending to her for more than a few moments at a time, and then only to introduce her to this politician or that. And always the wives. They traded names of boutiques and designers like business cards, weighing one another’s social status against the labels they could afford.
“Is that the new Chanel?” Stella was asked on more than one occasion.
“It is,” she said, giving the same little spin she’d practiced for Joe earlier. She let the skirt flare just enough to elicit approval and, in a number of instances, envy.
“It looks lovely on you. You have the right sort of boyish figure to wear the flapper cut.”
Narrow hips and a flat chest, they meant. A backhanded compliment. Occasionally Catherine took pity on Stella and whisked her away for another glass of champagne.
“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “They’re only testing you.”
“I’m not the one running for office.”
She straightened the angle of Stella’s hat. “Of course you are. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Everything Joe says and does reflects on you. And you’ll have to answer for it. In public and in private. Best you make peace with that now.”
Shortly after midnight, the men abandoned their wives in favor of the bar. The women watched them retreat in pairs through the mahogany doors of the male-only establishment.
“Come along,” Catherine said. “They won’t be long.”
The wives had rituals of their own. They scattered around the ballroom in groups of two and three for coffee, cigarettes, and gossip. The band quieted, and Catherine led her to a table in the corner, where Stella slipped off her shoes.
“Do you smoke?” Catherine asked.
“No.”
“You might want to reconsider. Eases your nerves. Makes the time pass quicker.” Catherine lifted a pack of cigarettes and a long cigarette holder from her purse. She lit the cig
arette smoothly and set it inside the six-inch tortoiseshell holder.
“I’ll never learn all these rules.”
“Sure you will. It takes time. And practice. But you carry yourself well. And Joe couldn’t be prouder of you. We’ve all noticed.”
“How do you handle these long nights? I’d rather be home in bed.”
Catherine looked at her wristwatch. “They’re like little boys, you know. Give it fifteen minutes and they’ll all begin to crash. Children and politicians have two speeds: running and asleep. But they haven’t gotten loud enough yet. It gets obnoxious just before they wind down.”
Sure enough, the ruckus in the bar began to grow until Stella and Catherine could hear them singing out in chorus:
The suckers will vote in the fall, tra-la;
The suckers will vote in the fall!
“Five more minutes and they’ll come stumbling back in here, red eyed and dizzy.” Catherine tapped the cigarette holder against her bottom lip and smiled, then pulled a long wisp of smoke between her thin lips. Fine lines were etched around her mouth, and Stella saw the telltale signs of age brought on by a hard political life.
True to Catherine’s prediction, the husbands began to trickle back into the ballroom, sedate and exhausted. They collected their wives and ushered them home.
Before parting, Catherine kissed Stella on the cheek. “You’ll do just fine.”
It wasn’t until Joe and Stella were back in their suite that she realized Catherine’s attention that night had been placed on her singularly. It was her statement as the governor’s wife to the other women that Stella was to be respected. And taken seriously. Had she known that earlier, she might have cried with gratitude.
Stella jumped when the bathroom door banged open. Joe stumbled out, stark naked and belting the lyrics to a profane drinking song:
There was a young lady named Lou
Who said as the parson withdrew,
“Now the Vicar is quicker,
And thicker, and slicker,
And two inches longer than you!”
His cheeks were flushed red from whiskey, and he roared with laughter when he saw the horrified look on her face.
She took a step backward. “You’ve been learning a few songs from Al Smith, I see.”
“Meaning what?”
She looked at the wall to avoid Joe’s raunchy gyrations. “That blasphemous song. And the one down in the bar.”
“It’s just a song, Stell. Something silly to lighten the mood.” She flinched but didn’t move as he grabbed her and flipped up the back of her dress. He ran his palm up her leg and tugged at her garter belt. “And that business down in the bar was just party high jinks. The boys were simply letting off steam with a harmless little parody.”
“If your voters heard that, they certainly wouldn’t consider it harmless.”
“My voters,” he said, yanking at her stocking, “would hardly be in a place like this. They’re on the docks. And in the garment district. So don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.” Joe pinned her against the wall. His breath was sour and his hands rough, and Stella stared at the ceiling while he wrestled with her designer dress.
She tried to slide away from him. “You’re drunk.”
He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back. His stubble was rough against her neck as he kissed it. “So?”
“You know I don’t like to make love when you’re drunk.”
“I don’t give a shit about making love, Stell. I want sex.”
Stella pushed her skirt down away from his probing hands. “I’m not in the mood.”
“You better get in the mood. Quick. Considering that I’m giving you a fourteen-thousand-dollar apartment tomorrow.”
Joe’s dark eyes were heavy lidded, and the beginning of each word was slurred. He groped her clumsily and grunted with the effort. Beads of sweat settled along his upper lip. Stella was sure he wouldn’t remember this tomorrow, unless she angered him to the point of sobriety. She tensed between Joe and the wall and grappled with her decision. She could push him away—he’d never forced her, after all—but there would be retribution. Or she could submit to the indignity and he’d likely be asleep before finishing.
Stella sighed and slid out from under his arm. She took his hand. “Let’s at least go to the bedroom.”
“I want to do it here.”
“I’ll get the lights, then.”
“Leave them on. I like to watch.”
STELLA heard Jude walk down the pier, but she ignored him. She leaned out over the lake, eyes focused on some distant point, as he came to a stop behind her. Stella didn’t turn around until he cleared his throat. Back in New York, she had been terrified that he would discover the hidden envelopes and hadn’t noticed how handsome he was. Dark hair. Steel-blue eyes. A strong, square jaw and broad shoulders.
“Detective Simon,” he said, extending his hand.
It hovered between them for a several seconds before she gripped it with cold fingertips. “We’ve met.”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d remember. Do you have a few minutes? I’ve come to take your statement.”
“You could have done that when you came to my apartment.” She could not keep the irritation out of her voice.
“That visit was unofficial.”
“Meaning unsanctioned?”
“No. Meaning off the record until my superiors were certain how to proceed.”
“You mean until another headline in the New York World forced them to proceed?”
“Should we sit? No point making this uncomfortable.”
Stella motioned to two Adirondack chairs at the end of the pier. The white paint was peeling and the wood splintered in places, but they were comfortable. She settled into the one closest to the water and tucked her bare feet beneath her legs, wrapping Joe’s dinner jacket tight around her chest. One hand wandered into the pocket. She lifted a cigarette from the pack and fumbled with the matchbook. Stella didn’t want to smoke it—was sick from the last one, in fact—but she needed something to hold. Detective Simon pulled a silver lighter from his pocket and held it out to her. The flame was tall and immediate, and she passed her cigarette through, eyes watering at the acrid smell of singed paper and burning tobacco.
“I’m sorry about your husband,” Jude said. “But I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Are you? Sorry, that is. You didn’t know him.”
“I met him a few times, actually.”
“Did you like him?”
“I didn’t know him well enough to dislike him.”
“Fair enough.” Stella laughed. She drew on the cigarette but didn’t inhale; rather, she held the smoke in her mouth until her tastebuds tingled and then spit it out.
“When was the last time you saw your husband?”
“August third. We had dinner at the Salt House.”
“What happened that night?”
“When we arrived, Joe went to make a phone call. He was gone about twenty minutes, and when he came back to the table, he told me that he had to return to New York first thing in the morning to ‘straighten a few things out.’ ”
Jude scratched at his notepad in shorthand as she spoke. Each stroke was deliberate and thick, indenting the page. “What sort of things?”
“The sort you don’t discuss with your wife, apparently.” Stella flicked the cigarette and then jumped to brush the hot ash from her lap.
“Do you know who your husband phoned that night?”
“No, I do not.” She put Owney Madden, and their agreement, out of her mind as quickly as possible so the lie wouldn’t register on her face.
“Judge Crater has been missing a month. Why didn’t you report this before you returned to the city?”
“I was told not to.”
Jude stopped writing and looked at her. “Please explain.”
“He left here on the third. My birthday was that next Saturday, the ninth, but he didn’t show up, even though he’d pr
omised to be back in time. So I phoned Simon Rifkind—an associate of Joe’s—and he told me Joe had been seen around town and not to worry.”
“But you did worry?”
“About the wrong thing.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that ‘He’s been seen around town’ can sometimes be jargon for ‘Your husband has picked up a skirt on the side and you need to keep your nose out of it if you want to protect his career.’ ”
Jude’s pen whipped across the page in a frenzy. “Did your husband have a history of infidelity?”
Stella shifted away from him. It took too long to sift her answer. “I’ve learned not to question Joe when he has business that needs tending. That’s why I didn’t argue with him when he went back to the city. And that’s why it took me so long to go after him.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“There are things you learn to live with.” Stella thought of Joe’s bandaged hand. “More or less.”
Jude watched her but said nothing.
“Are you married, Detective?”
“Yes.”
“And do you cheat on your wife?”
His face twisted in offense. “Of course not.”
“All men cheat on their wives. If not with a woman, then with work.” She gave him a sideways glance. “I wonder which method you prefer.”
“I beg your pardon, but I don’t—”
“I’m not the one you need to convince.” Stella finished her cigarette and then tossed the butt into the lake.
“If you knew my wife, you’d understand that infidelity is something I’d never consider.” A spark of anger lit up his eyes but was replaced with an emotion she couldn’t identify. He quickly transformed his face into a look of indifference.
The flash of intensity in his eyes convinced Stella that he was serious, that she’d assumed too much. But at least she’d found his weakness. This pleased her immensely, and she waited for him to continue.