by Luna Joya
“Ruby says it’s because I’m an idiot.” Her shoulders slumped.
Mina patted the space on the bed next to her. “I’m thinking in this one limited instance she’s right.”
Moving to the bed, she hiccupped from either the sobbing or the booze on an empty stomach.
Mina frowned. “Can you fix it? I mean you fix everything. It’s what you do. You can fix this, right?”
“I don’t know. I may have screwed this one up too much to undo.” She sniffed. “He pleaded with me not to push him away. Pops even warned me today. Sam’s been rejected by his own parents. He told me there’d be no coming back, but I kept driving.”
Mina put an arm around her. “Why?”
“Because he puts the restaurant first, and I get what’s left. Because I’m not sure where our relationship is going. Mostly, because I’m scared shitless.”
Mina cocked her head. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll figure that out tomorrow. I can’t face it tonight.”
“Me either,” Mina whispered. “Maybe if we don’t say it out loud, then it’s not real.”
Cami sat up straight. “Say what out loud? What did you see?”
Mina dropped her gaze and picked at her fingernails.
“Mina, what you saw today, you’ve put it together?” Her sister’s bent head nodded. “You know what happened?” Another nod.
“Not her death.” Mina sniffed. “But I think I saw everything just before.”
“Let’s finish this.” She grabbed Mina’s hand and dragged her toward the backyard to find Delia.
“You mean finish the wine?” Mina croaked.
“That too.” She stopped to grab the scrap of fabric and pins she’d stolen from Leslie Sol’s possessions. “You can tell us what you saw. But the rest, we need to know the rest, and Delia might give it to us.”
With Mina in tow, she pushed into the backyard and thrust the pilfered loot toward Delia. “These belonged to Sunny. Can you try for a read?”
Delia flinched as though Cami shoved hot pokers instead of innocuous-looking objects at her. Her gaze bounced between the hair pins to the shimmering silver material. “Do I even want to know how you got these?”
“No.” Cami lined them on the table. “Please. I wouldn’t ask, but we need to know.”
Delia stared at her tear-stained face and glanced at Mina’s trembling mouth before turning to Ruby.
Their oldest sister grinned. “Come on, Deals. You want to find out what happened too. Don’t pretend the mystery doesn’t call to you.” Ruby yanked up her sleeves and wiggled her fingers. “My magic will bring you around afterward.”
Delia sighed. “Fine. Wine first.” She beckoned for her glass with a quick flex of her fingers. Ruby obliged. Delia took a long swallow, staring at the items. “No guarantees. You know my psychometric power shows only what it wants, when it wants.”
Cami’s heart thumped as Delia’s slim fingers hovered above the fabric, stroking a featherlight touch before yanking away. Delia sucked in a breath. “Heartbreak and possibilities.”
Her hand shifted to the hair pins. She touched the first. “An older woman.” Moving to the second, she murmured something about a maid. Her knuckle brushed the third. Her head shot up. The grey-blue of Delia’s irises glowed silver.
“Not Sunny.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Casa Oceana
Sunday, December 17, 1933, around 11:00 a.m.
Coral hurried to the landing of her home’s grand staircase, the perfect showcase entrance to frame her tall, statuesque beauty. She’d heard Paul raging from four rooms away and had tied her hair in a knot to hide there were more grey strands than ebony these days. She didn’t need reminders of her age when she confronted her cheating husband.
Paul wasn’t the handsome heartthrob he had been when she married him, the powerful director who had promised her decades in the pictures together. Drinking and debts had taken their toll. In the room below, he hunched next to the enormous steamer trunk she had decorated with displays of antique silver and first-edition books.
She clasped her hands and opened her mouth to ask what he was doing. Probably selling more of her valuables. But she didn’t get the words out before he moved to the side. Sunny Sol slumped against the steamer with her hair in her face. Her hands lay open and outstretched.
“Paul.” Her voice cut through the cavernous room. “What did you do?”
He rubbed his forehead, blinking bleary eyes at her. “She made me. Look what she made me do.”
Coral clamored down the stairs. Her heels clacked with each step. Bracelets jangled on her arms. Her breathing turned harsh, but she didn’t stop until she loomed over him.
Sunny’s cheeks were pink and her lipstick smeared.
“Is she?” She swallowed. “Is she dead?”
He continued arranging Sunny’s curls back where they belonged. “No. She’s drunk and high. She hit her head and knocked herself out a bit.”
“What really happened?”
“She fell.”
Coral didn’t believe him. She’d been pinched and pushed by Paul. “How did she fall?”
“Why do women question everything?” He rubbed his eyes. “We argued. Sunny was leaving me, leaving the restaurant.”
“What?” She clutched her necklace. “She can’t pull out. She’s in too far.”
“Sunny was going to the studio.”
“The studio?” That little bitch couldn’t tattle to the studio. There would go Coral’s chances. She’d been working with a voice coach and a stylist who was supposed to do something about her thinning hair. She was on the verge of a comeback. “But why? You haven’t made a movie in years.”
“Sunny knows about our agreement with Alan. She threatened to go to the police.”
She gaped at him. The studios would be the least of their problems. “We would be arrested, questioned, and all of our dealings aired out in the press for a public trial by media.”
“I know. I lost my temper. We were arguing, and she started fighting. She pushed me. I pushed her back. I didn’t mean to hurt her.” He patted Sunny’s cheek. “What have I done? What do we do?”
She wrung her hands so tightly a knuckle cracked. “She was going to leave the business?”
He nodded.
“And leave you? She told you this?”
He nodded again.
She bristled. “If she tells people of our agreement with Alan, it’ll ruin us.”
He continued to touch the unconscious woman. “Sunny won’t tell. I just need to get her to see reason. Help me wake her. Do you think I should bring her some water? If it’s the alcohol, maybe bread would help. Something to soak up the spirits.”
“She will take everything from us.” No amount of talking by Paul would change that.
“She won’t. We will wake her and make her understand. Maybe I should take her to the doctor. To a hospital. No, a private physician. Someone who won’t tell the studio.”
Coral put her hand on his arm. “Of course. I know a doctor.” She needed a plan, something that would keep Sunny quiet. But who could they trust? No one. The woman knew too much.
“You do?” He clutched at Sunny. “You’ll get her some help?”
“I’ll take care of it. Help me get her to the garage. I can use her car, right?”
“She wouldn’t mind. Why won’t she wake up?” He jostled her slightly. Her head bobbed against his chest.
She needed to get him moving. “Please, Paul. I can’t carry her to the car.”
He shifted Sunny’s weight against him. Her head lolled. “No,” he repeated again and again.
“You have to get her downstairs. Then I can take care of everything.” Coral cajoled, coerced, and prodded until he shouldered Sunny’s weight. It wasn’t dignified, but it’d be the only way he could carry her. He panicked when Sunny’s shoes fell from her feet.
“I’ve got them,” she assured him. “Keep going.”
It took long minutes and several pauses for him to carry the one hundred and twenty pounds of unconscious woman down the stairs. In the end, he heaved Sunny onto the front bench seat of her Packard Victoria. He wiped the heavy sweat from his brow, cheeks, and neck. Coral tried not to gag on the stench of perspiration mixed with her perfume.
“Are you sure?” he asked, struggling for air. “Maybe I should go with you.”
“And invite even more questions?” She shook her head.
“What if Sunny wakes, and I’m not there? She’ll never forgive me.” He reached into the car to straighten the blonde’s curls. “She’ll come around.”
“She needs a doctor right now. Some space. Some time to think before doing anything rash.”
He shook his head, nodded, then shook his head again. “I should go. I can’t believe I shoved her so hard. I didn’t mean to.”
She patted his arm. “She knows.”
“Will you tell her?”
“I will.” She put Sunny’s shoes in the car. “You better get back to the café.”
“I was there all yesterday.”
“It’s Sunday. You always say they can’t run the business on a weekend with both you and Sunny gone.”
He stared at her, his gaze losing some of the dazed dilation. “I do say that. All the time. It’s nice someone pays attention. Sunny and I need to be at the café. The accounts improve when we are there to greet guests and keep the staff in line. Weekend sales suffer when she shops and parties instead of working. I told her that.”
“Don’t worry.” She pushed him toward the door. “Straighten your clothes and go down to the café. I’ll handle everything.”
“You promise you’ll take care of it.”
“I promise.” She watched until Paul walked out of sight down the stairs. She turned back to Sunny. It was all a mess and left for Coral to pick up the pieces.
She closed the garage and leaned through the passenger side inches away from Sunny. Taking a deep breath, she considered her options. She could take Sunny to the doctor and risk difficult questions. What if the woman woke to start spouting the venom she had raged at Paul earlier? She talked, knowing Sunny couldn’t hear her, but needing to reason aloud through the choices.
“You’ll ruin us. Our careers. Our living. We’ll become headline fodder, and we’ll be lucky to stay out of jail. Or worse, if Alan Knapp learns we’ve been exposed. He doesn’t take kindly to people who interfere with his business.” She rolled her shoulders to shrug away the memories of rumors about how illegal gambling handled people who owed petty debts. Sending out enforcers to beat a few dollars out of a person’s flesh.
Clara Bow, a former costar of Sunny’s, had never recovered from the career-crippling headlines when one of the Davino brothers dragged her name through every newspaper in town with his lawsuit to collect a gaming debt. Clara had insisted she didn’t owe the exorbitant sum the Davino criminal claimed. Still, the lawsuit made headlines, and the studios could not afford another scandal. The actress had retired shortly thereafter. No movie exec came calling for a leading lady associated with crooks like the Davino family, and the public had little sympathy for a welsher.
A woman needed her work and her marriage. Sunny had bickered with Clara on the set while that farce unfolded. The two had gotten into a scripted fight that had come to actual blows on screen. Typical of Sunny to incite even a coworker to come undone.
Coral wiped the smudged lipstick from Sunny’s cheek. “You’re a bad luck charm for everyone unfortunate enough to have you ensnared in their lives. Look what you did to my marriage. I had to drag Paul from that damned set to get him away from your web. I thought we were done with you when Scoria flopped. I was certain he’d see his little prodigy had failed him.”
She dabbed away the smeared mascara. “You got married, and I was sure his fascination with you was over. I would get another chance at my marriage. That Paul and I could come up to this beautiful place and fall in love all over again. That we could manage a lovely seaside restaurant to cater to the stars and get back into the movie world.” She smiled wistfully at the memory of a promise almost realized.
“But then you divorced, and Paul ran right back to you. I had to stand by and watch you fornicate with my husband in the business we had built as a couple, steps away from the home we shared. It was your name that went up over mine in neon lights. It was you in his thoughts. You in his bed. You stole my life.” Coral could feel angry tears well in her eyes, and she blinked furiously to keep them from falling.
“Everyone loves you, Sunny. You could have had any man. Any life. Why did you have to take mine?”
If she drove Sunny to the doctor, the woman wouldn’t be grateful. She would find a way to turn this all around to point at Paul and Coral. She would drag them down with her and then dance away like nothing could touch her. Coral knew it. She had seen it before. In the past five years, she had learned a lot about what havoc Sunny could wreak with the slightest crook of a slender finger.
“I can’t let you do it this time.” She pushed Sunny into an upright position, ignoring the way her head lolled to the side. “You would destroy everything I’ve ever worked for, and still the public would love you. I’d never known true jealousy until I met you. The anger and humiliation. The shame.”
Coral straightened the expensive, unspoiled silk hosiery over Sunny’s polished toes and slipped the heels on her feet. “You don’t even know what damage you do.” She arranged the gloves and purse left behind on the bench seat, pulled the mink coat around Sunny’s breasts, and tapped a falling petal of the flower pinned to her.
A camellia. A pretty delicate thing. “I won’t let you live my life any more than you already have. I’m taking it back.”
She could tell Paul that Sunny had never woken. That she had died from the booze. Or even the blow to the head if he pushed the issue. Maybe she would have died anyway. She had told him she would take care of everything. This was the only way to ensure Sunny’s silence.
Nodding, the decision set in her mind, she rounded to the driver’s side to sit beside Sunny. The key was already in the ignition. With a deep breath and a final resolve, she reached for the ignition button and fired up the big V-12 engine, a flashy car with a powerful thrumming energy. It matched Sunny’s personality. It was a fitting end.
She took care not to open the engine all the way, keeping it as quiet as possible. She slipped out of the car and closed the door. Looking back, it appeared that Sunny slept peacefully.
Before she could second guess herself, she hurried from the garage and slid the door closed. She knew from films that carbon monoxide could kill fairly quickly. A painless sort of death supposedly. A person drifted into a permanent sleep. Sunny would simply not wake up.
She waited and worried, practicing all her voice exercises in a hushed tone to distract herself from the steady rumble of the engine and the underscoring screech of her nerves. Lighting a cigarette, she wondered how long she should stay outside. What if she was caught? What was she doing? Why had it come to this? She had never been a spiteful person. But what if Sunny brought them all down?
Coral had been steadfastly loyal to her husband whenever it mattered most. Couldn’t she do him this one final service? What if Sunny being gone brought them back together? Paul would never forgive her if he knew what really happened. Or maybe he would thank her.
Oh no, what had she done?
She paced in front of the door, her thoughts tangling. Could she still undo her actions? She finished a second smoke, slid the garage door open wide, wrapped her scarf around her face, and hurried inside. The car still idled. She rushed to the driver’s side. Sunny’s face had turned dark pink, a macabre rouge smeared like a horror play.
Coral unlatched the door. Sunny’s eyes flew open, startling green against the unnatural blush of her skin. Coral hesitated in fear. Sunny heaved toward the driver’s door. Coral rushed backward two paces. Sunny pulled herself up with the steering wheel an
d slid toward her. She gasped and jumped out of reach.
“No,” Coral protested. She recoiled from the judgment and condemnation in Sunny’s eyes. The woman would talk. She would tell Paul and the press. Coral would be destroyed. She’d be blamed for it all. There would be no coming back from this.
Her heart raced, the terror of being discovered and of devastation rippling through her. She clutched her stomach with one hand to press down the nausea, never letting go of the scarf held tightly over her face.
Sunny hauled herself to the driver’s side and struggled toward the door in a fight for her life. A trickle of blood descended from her nose. The startling red so vivid and pure.
It dripped and spattered on the running board beneath the door. The one single ruby spot like a tear, a stain that spurred Coral into action. Using her palms, she pushed Sunny back into the car.
Coral could feel tears pool in her own eyes. Sunny would be her downfall. “Why can’t you just leave us? Why won’t you just go?”
The woman’s eyes slid shut again. The blood snaked down from a nostril. Coral ran from the garage, slid the door shut, and counted her own hoarse hard breathing. Her heart galloped as fast as her thoughts. The horror over what she had done screamed in her mind.
Disgust and dizziness overwhelmed her, and she sank to the ground outside the garage door. A kernel of self-hatred rooted inside her and bloomed a bit more with every passing moment.
She couldn’t catch her breath. Her entire body flushed and tingled. It was too late to go back. She could never undo this. Sobs in great gulping heaves racked her. Her hair had fallen, the pins probably scattered in the scuffle. She buried her face in her knees and wrapped her arms over her head.
When her own moans became whimpers, she cracked the door. The wind outside whipped and wailed, but there was no noise or movement from inside other than the running engine. She opened the door wide.
She paused. There was no smell, nothing to indicate what had happened here. And yet she waited. Counted to one hundred before stepping a single foot inside the garage. Clutching the scarf to her nose and mouth, she crept closer to the car, pulled the key, and killed the engine.