by A W Hartoin
The wide marble pastry table had a stack of cold butter and all the ingredients on it, like The Girls were expecting me. Maybe they were, since they knew about The Pageant.
“Coffee, my dear?” asked Myrtle.
“Love some,” I said.
Myrtle got busy making an espresso for me. The Girls were old-fashioned in many ways, including coffee. They didn’t believe in Mr. Coffees or fancy Rocket machines. They used the little Italian espresso pot their mother, Florence, brought back from her European honeymoon in the late 1920s.
Millicent gave me my apron and we got to work, pounding the butter into a rectangle. It wasn’t just one rectangle. Apparently, we were making Kouign-amann for the entire neighborhood. While I pounded, my godmothers mixed up the dough in a pair of KitchenAid mixers. I hurried up and doubled my efforts to finish before they did. My arm and hand ached, but I made it.
“Oh,” I said. “I left my purse in the other room. Be right back.”
“Okay, dear,” said Millicent without looking up.
I hustled into the Breakfast Room and took a closer look at Stella’s flower. Definitely out of place, almost like a different painter did the work. The painting wasn’t signed on the front, so I carefully lifted it off the wall and turned it over. The back of the canvas had only a very faint scrawl of pencil. It took me a second to make out the letters. Sinclair. It wasn’t like an artist signature. Other than that, only the usual Bled Collection info was on the frame. Every piece got a label naming the essentials, like provenance, price, etc… Stella’s portrait’s label was oddly minimal. Florence Bled, The Girls’ mother, received it into the collection. The year was 1943. No month or day. No price, dealer, or private seller was noted. The Bleds, especially Florence, were very detail-oriented when it came to art. There was more information on the pieces Stella smuggled out of Europe for Jewish families during the war.
I hung the portrait back up, straightened it, and took another look. Something kept drawing my eye back to that flower. It was so detailed. I leaned in, my nose almost touching the canvas, and that’s when I saw it. The swirls of paint weren’t just the makings of a flower. There was a letter in there, and not just one. I had to stare at it for a minute before my eyes got the whole thing. DH8. Not exactly initials. I tried again, but DH8 was it.
I stepped back to see if anything else caught my eye and Millicent came in, holding her rolling pin. She was frowning and that wasn’t her normal expression at all. “I thought you were getting your purse.”
“I was, but something about Stella makes me think,” I said.
“About what?” she said slowly.
Be careful. Don’t scare her off.
“She makes me wonder if I could survive whatever she did over there.”
Millicent set her pin on the table and wiped her hands on her apron. “I wonder at that myself and I don’t believe I would have.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“Yes, I do. I would never have been there in the first place.” She drew me away from the portrait and stroked my back. “But you would’ve survived and thrived.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“You’ve got Stella’s brand of courage.” She got thoughtful. “And Uncle Josiah’s. You’re very like him in many ways.”
She made it sound like we were related, but Spidermonkey had checked. I wasn’t.
“I don’t get that at all. Josiah was a hero. He fought in two world wars.” Those things were true, but being like Josiah wasn’t always such a good thing. The Bleds had a streak of insanity running through the family and Josiah was generally the reason people thought they were nuts. Elias Bled, who supposedly jumped off a bridge in Paris in 1910, was another reason, but the Bleds kept him pretty quiet. Josiah wasn’t the sort you could keep quiet. He was a WWI flying ace who hobnobbed with everyone from the Vanderbilts to Errol Flynn. He got arrested for public drunkenness and nudity a bunch of times. He liked to walk down the upscale Hawthorne Avenue in the buff and was caught sleeping in neighbors’ beds a few times. And there was a rumor that he murdered his lover, Bernice Collins, in the butler’s pantry of his house, now my parents’ house. Bernice had disappeared and was never seen again. So that didn’t help.
There were a few other Bleds with interesting histories, but Josiah took the cake. Even though the family and the general public thought he was crazier than a shithouse rat, as my father would say, he was also beloved. Although he disappeared on a trip to Paris with my father before I was born, I’d heard the stories all my life. Josiah Bled was special. Me, like him? I don’t think so. I might be crazy, but I wasn’t wild about walking around nude in private, much less in public.
“You have everything Josiah had,” said Millicent.
I grinned. “He was curvy and a magnet for crime?”
“A magnet, yes, but never curvy. You go into the kitchen.” She gave me a look that said you had better do what I say. “I’m going to get something.” She shooed me out of the Morning Room and Myrtle captured me in the kitchen. She held onto my arm and said that it was time to laminate the dough. We set to work folding the dough around the planks of butter and then rolling them together. Maybe laminating dough did make me tenacious. I always got this obsessive urge to finish and make it perfect. It was against my will, but I couldn’t help it.
Myrtle and I got through three rollings before Millicent came back. She had a large leather album that looked like the scrapbook that Florence had put together on Stella’s adventures during the war. I’d seen it once, a thing of beauty in hand-tooled leather with the word Tarragon embossed on the front. If I could get ahold of that scrapbook, a lot of questions would get answered.
“Pop those in the refrigerator,” said Millicent. “The butter will be warming by now and Mercy needs a break.”
I did need a break and it was embarrassing since Myrtle was elderly and looked like she could roll dough all day. I didn’t say so and quickly wrapped up the planks and stowed them in the fridge.
Myrtle made more espresso in her little pot and Millicent sat down in the armchair by the window. It was the same armchair Lester was sitting in when the men from The Klinefeld Group came in and attacked him. I’d thought The Girls might want to get rid of it, but they said it reminded them of Lester. It reminded me, too, but not in a good way.
I drew up a chair next to Myrtle and got a good look at the album. It was identical to Stella’s album, except it was blue and Josiah was embossed on the cover. Myrtle and I went through the album page by page. Josiah Bled was born in 1900. It was always weird to see pictures of him. I always thought of Josiah as old, for some reason. I said as much and The Girls laughed.
“Josiah was never old, even when he was old,” said Myrtle, coming over to give me a tiny espresso cup.
“Like you,” I said.
“We’re not so old,” said Millicent. They weren’t, I guess. Florence lived to ninety-eight and they were pretty healthy.
We flipped through more pages until I spotted Stella. It was a great picture of her and Josiah standing next to a Sopwith Camel. Stella was about thirteen and already showing signs of her later character. Her expression was defiant and proud. Josiah was smiling in a devilish way. He looked more like Indiana Jones than a millionaire playboy, all scruffy and wearing a well-worn jacket and goggles. I’d seen that picture before, but hadn’t thought much about it.
“Where’d he get that plane?” I asked.
“He brought it back from the war. The first war. He always had a preference for the Camels. He taught Stella to fly in that plane. We still have it.”
“Really?”
“Of course. Currently, it’s on loan to the Smithsonian.”
We flipped a few more pages and came to Stella’s wedding to another so-called playboy, Nicky Lawrence, one of the heirs to the United Shipping and Steel fortune, the same company that paid the bills on the Sorkines’ Paris apartment until 1980 when our lawyer, Big Steve, took over. So many connections
. But I still didn’t know why anybody did anything.
Stella’s wedding could’ve been a huge event, but like all Bled weddings, it was relatively small. I knew pretty much everyone who appeared in the pictures with Josiah. Millicent named a few family friends that I didn’t know. Bernard F. Dickmann, the mayor, and his wife were there and the president of St. Louis University. A younger couple appeared with Josiah and they seemed a little out of place. They were swankier than the rest of the guests and had a European air. They also posed with some artists that the family knew. Stella stood between them in one shot with their arms wrapped around each other.
“Who are they?” I pointed at the couple.
“Oh, yes—” said Millicent.
“We’ve wondered about them,” said Myrtle, looking away. “They must’ve been friends of the Lawrences.”
The Girls exchanged a quick look. I caught it but didn’t question them. We went through the war years. There was a picture of Josiah in a German uniform, his multiple passports with his false identities, and one picture of him with Stella and a young girl in her early teens. It seemed like he should’ve been old at the time of WWII, but he was the youngest Bled brother and didn’t even look the thirty-eight years that he was. Millicent said she thought they were in England and the name of the girl escaped her. She thought there was something about Stella smuggling her out of Germany.
After the war, there were plenty of happy pictures, gallery openings, parties, and weddings. The unnamed couple showed up in several pictures in New York, but I didn’t ask about them again. At the end of the album were my parents at a family party, sitting with the elderly Josiah. Myrtle was right. Despite the wrinkles, Josiah had the sparkling eyes and straight posture of a young man. He was at my parents’ wedding. There was a picture of him with my pregnant mother that must’ve been taken shortly before his disappearance. I wanted to ask what happened to Josiah in Europe with my dad, but I’d tried before and gotten nowhere. The answer was always the same. He died because obviously, he wasn’t alive. My godmothers were great at talking in circles.
“I still don’t see how I’m like him,” I said when Millicent closed the album.
“You’re a hero in your way,” said Myrtle.
“Not like him.”
“Perhaps you had to know him to understand.”
“I guess. We’d better get back to the dough or we’ll never get done,” I said.
We did three more turns of the dough and formed the pastries. Millicent put the first trays in the oven and sent me up to get Tiny because he really must try them when they were hot. I explained about Tiny’s weight and that he needed to stick to his diet because of his hip and, you know, diabetes. They thought he could have just one and they’d make something spa-like for dinner. I didn’t know what that meant. I just hoped it didn’t include butter.
I found Tiny on the treadmill in the attic. Attic wasn’t really accurate. There weren’t any boxes, rafters, or dead mice. It was really only an attic because the ceilings were eight feet instead of fifteen.
Tiny had his broad back to me and he wasn’t working out. He was on his phone, his big voice hushed, but it bounced off the walls so I could hear him well.
“What about Mercy?” he asked.
There was a pause.
“She’ll want to know about it.”
Pause.
“Yeah, I guess. If they didn’t get in, it’s okay.”
Pause.
“Maybe it’s some idiot Tommy put away. Criminals ain’t all that bright. No dimwit’s gonna get past Tommy Watts’ security.”
Pause.
“I’ll go over every night.” Pause. “Sure.”
Tiny put away his phone and started up the treadmill. I walked over and leaned on the handrail. “So who’s trying to break into my parents’ house?
Tiny hit the emergency stop button and the machine jolted to a halt. “Ah crap, Mercy. You can’t sneak up on a man that way. It ain’t polite.”
“Yeah, I’m always real concerned about being polite. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing to do with Lester,” he said, wiping off a copious amount of sweat from his brow.
“Lester? Who said anything about Lester?” I asked.
“Nobody. I got to work out.”
“Tiny, I won’t tell them anything, but they’re my parents. I’ve got a right to know.”
“Your dad says you got no rights.”
I slapped the emergency button when he tried to start the treadmill.
“Mercy. Dammit.”
“Come on. You know you want to tell me.”
“You got that wrong, but I’ll tell you just to get rid of you. Your dad’s right. You’re a huge pain in the ass.”
I leaned on the wall and crossed my arms.
“I guess you’ve heard that before.”
“Ya think? Get to it.”
There wasn’t much to tell. Somebody had been trying to break through my parents’ security system on the house. They were crap at it. Dad thought I didn’t need to know because he thought it would upset me after what happened to Lester. Dad said it wasn’t the same people since the Bled break-in was a sophisticated operation and this one was strictly amateur hour. The Klinefeld Group definitely wasn’t amateur hour, but I didn’t like it.
“Who were you talking to?” I asked.
“Denny. He’s been working it, but whoever it is used public computers at the library. But that’s as smart as they get. He thinks it’s one of your dad’s old collars, a run of the mill moron. The last try was a couple of weeks ago. Nothing since then. Looks like they got a clue.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You okay?” Tiny asked.
“Yeah. Just wondering who it was.”
“Denny says this has happened a couple of times over the years. Nobody ever gets in.”
I did remember it happening a few times when I was a kid. Somebody tried to jimmy our locks, broke a window, stuff like that. My dad pissed people off. He got some death threats after a gang-related case, but nothing ever came of it.
“Alright. Time to eat,” I said.
“What the what,” exclaimed Tiny. “I thought you was going to talk to them.”
“I did. You only have to eat one.”
“How many calories?”
“I wouldn’t think too hard about that if I were you.”
“Mercy!”
I calmed him down with the idea of showing them his Fitness Pal account and diet plan from the nutritionist. We could break out the X-rays of his hip if necessary. Tiny agreed to come down and suffer the tortures of piping hot Kouign-amann. He loved them. Who doesn’t? I only ate two, a record low for me.
“I’ve got to go. Chuck was asleep when I left. He’ll wonder where I went.” I snagged a third on my way out.
“Wait,” called out Myrtle. “Go over to your parents’.”
I glanced at Tiny and he shrugged while licking his fingers.
“Why?”
“Your mom needs a break.”
“Er…okay.” Normally, I would’ve questioned that, but I was on a mission and The Girls were taken up with Tiny and his ideas for dinner. He was their new Lester and he didn’t even know it yet.
Instead of leaving, I tucked into the library and closed the heavy door behind me. The walls were covered with bookcases. The Bleds kept great family records and that worked to my advantage. I found the wedding shelf high on the left wall above a shelf covered in ancient fertility statues. It didn’t just have pictures. There were slim bound books on each wedding, containing things like the menu, venue, china pattern, and guest list, because somebody might want to know what Great Aunt Eugenie had for her appetizers in 1922.
Stella’s wedding details were in a green book and, as I expected, her wedding guests were listed. Who was invited, who showed, and believe it or not, what food preferences they had. I cross-checked the seating chart with the guest list. It was pretty easy to tell who was family and who w
as a friend, especially with the Bled family tree on the wall. I narrowed down my mystery couple to twelve possibilities and took pictures of the lists and charts.
I put the book away and slipped out of the house through the front door, jogging down the brick walk to Hawthorne with what I was sure was another clue tucked away in my phone.
Chapter Three
MY PHONE BECAME a hindrance rather than a help before I got halfway down the street. The song “Sexy Curve” burst out of it and made me jump.
Fantastic.
I swiped Mickey away and made a mental note to dump the stupid ringtone that Chuck thought was so funny. Yeah, it was real hilarious to change my ringtones to songs that my dad used to woo my mom. Gross.
Mickey called again and again and again. I couldn’t walk five feet. He wasn’t one to give up. I stopped under an overhanging elm to change that ringtone right then. Not a good plan. I somehow managed to keep “Sexy Curve”, but I made it techno. If anything could make that song worse, that was it.
“Fine,” I said. “I give up.”
I swiped the accept button and Mickey’s voice burst out of the speaker. “Mercy, what the hell took so long?”
“I was avoiding you.”
He burst out laughing and told someone what I said.
“What is it, Mickey?” I asked, turning down my parents’ front walk.
Mickey got serious, which was always bad for me. “Let’s talk dates. I’m thinking Austin and then Red Rocks. Three nights each. We’ll need some rehearsal time, say a week to integrate you into blocking.”
This is not happening.
“I’m not a singer. I’m a nurse.”
Mickey muttered some stuff I couldn’t understand and then said, “You should intro us. Warm up the crowd.”