She's No Angel

by Leslie Kelly

Trying to go back to sleep, she steeled her mind against her dark dreams, inviting more pleasant ones to join her in slumber. But that just brought the previous one to mind. And she suddenly realized which staircase she’d been dreaming about. Those uneven steps and the moist walls were so familiar because they had once frightened her so much.

  They were the stairs that led to Ivy’s basement.

  Ivy. God, she’d gotten so caught up with everything else this evening, she’d completely forgotten about the knitting box Ashley had brought over earlier. She hadn’t had a chance to do much more than open the lid and peek inside to make sure the papers, photos and journals were still there, hidden beneath the yarn and supplies.

  They had been. But frankly, Jen didn’t think she could wait until tomorrow to examine them more carefully. Something was nagging at her, an uneasiness she couldn’t explain. Maybe it had been Ivy’s strange attitude during her last visit. She’d been so disinterested in the box—whispering about it not being “safe” to have it in her home. And knowing Ivy and Ida Mae were being bothered with phone calls of their own added to Jen’s concern.

  Jennifer suddenly wanted to look through the box again.

  Moving carefully, she slipped out from under Mike’s strong arm, trying not to wake him. She made her way across the darkened bedroom, grabbing the plush terry robe from the back of a chair where she’d tossed it after her shower earlier. Mutt lifted his head off the floor, growling low in his throat, but with a quiet “Shh, go back to sleep,” he left her alone.

  Once outside the bedroom, she carefully shut the door behind her, still making her way in darkness, so no stray glimmer of light beneath the door would wake Mike up.

  Why she was being so secretive, she honestly didn’t know. Or maybe she did. Maybe it was because Mike was a cop—because he’d already exhibited a casual interest in Ivy’s history. The last thing Jen needed at this point was to arouse his curiosity any further. If the box did pose some sort of danger to Ivy, it could only have something to do with Ivy’s husband’s death, and her affair with Eddie James.

  “Too many secrets,” she whispered as she entered the living room, finally switching on a small table lamp. Honestly, though, she didn’t think she had even touched the tip of the iceberg when it came to the secrets being kept by the Feeney women. From what her father had hinted at, the history of mysteries, scandal and secrets had run through the Feeney females for a very long time.

  “Until now,” she mentally insisted. This sneaky midnight excursion didn’t count. She wasn’t, after all, keeping her own secret. It belonged to Ivy.

  Quickly retrieving the box from beneath the dining-room table where she’d stashed it earlier, she carried it into the living room, setting it on the coffee table. Sitting cross-legged on the couch, she reached for the faded, padded lid. A hand-stitched sampler saying There’s No Place Like Home was set into the top, and she’d often wondered whether her unknown grandmother’s hands had created it.

  “Please, please don’t let anything be missing,” she whispered, not even wanting to think about facing Aunt Ivy if she’d lost one of her precious treasures. It wouldn’t matter if it was a single receipt from a lunch she and Eddie had shared at a diner. If anything was gone, her aunt would know about it. And she’d scream bloody murder.

  Having been in possession of the case for more than a year, Jen was pretty familiar with its contents. So as she began to lift things out—one at a time—she started to breathe easier.

  Here were the four small journals, one for each year—1963, 1964, 1965 and 1966. The one for 1966 ended abruptly well before the end of the year. The last entry had been written a few nights before Leo Cantone had been murdered.

  She had asked Ivy once why she’d stopped writing. Her aunt had told her everything had been too crazy during those final days. And after them, she’d never had enough happiness in her day-to-day life to write about.

  She’d said nothing else, though Jen had asked her a couple of times about Eddie. She’d never admitted if she knew where he’d gone, or if she’d ever heard from him. Jen hadn’t ever come right out and asked Ivy if her lover had killed her husband, but she had to imagine her aunt knew Jen suspected as much.

  Ivy had never denied it.

  “Pictures, the pictures,” she mumbled as she dug farther. They were all here—Ivy and Leo shaking hands with a young, still-hot-looking Elvis Presley. Ivy and Eddie laughing beside a Christmas tree weighed down with huge colorful lightbulbs, two tons of garland and fistfuls of thick, shiny tinsel. Ivy and Leo waltzing at a Hollywood gala. Ivy and Eddie sharing a milk shake. The way their foreheads nearly touched, and their two straws descended from their lips down into the cream, they created a heart shape that suddenly made Jen’s own heart ache a little.

  She didn’t approve of adultery—whether it was committed by men or by women. But this had so obviously been love.

  “Where did you go, Eddie?” she whispered, amazed at how he’d just vanished. And, judging by the way he was staring at her aunt, she couldn’t help wondering how on earth he’d been able to stay away for forty years, never once trying to come back for her.

  Though deceptively fragile, Jen knew Ivy was strong. So she had to assume that her aunt had ordered her lover to stay away, fearing he’d be charged with Leo’s murder if he ever returned. There was, after all, no statute of limitations on murder.

  Finally, she reached the bottom of the box. Nothing was missing. Every single scrap of paper was accounted for, to the best of her recollection. If she had overlooked something, it had to have been incredibly minor. A single postcard, a handwritten note, at the very most.

  So, obviously her paranoia had been for nothing—her home invader had not gone rifling through this box, no matter how valuable and important Aunt Ivy thought it was.

  “God, I am not cut out to be Nancy Drew,” she mumbled, rubbing at her weary eyes. Her shoulders ached from bending over the box, and she suddenly wanted to put all this away—out of sight, out of her brain—and crawl back into bed with Mike.

  Reaching for the journals, she lifted them inside the case, but as she did so, the corner of one scraped the padded side of the interior. The faded satin pulled away from the hard casing. For a second, Jen’s heart stopped. She’d torn the fragile thing. Her aunt would rip her heart out if Jennifer had damaged something that had once belonged to Ivy’s beloved mother.

  But she soon realized the lining had not torn. Instead, a few tiny hooks—so small Jen would never have seen them if the lining had remained in position—had popped open, releasing the material. “What on earth?” she whispered. Carefully touching the lining, she slid her finger along the seam, soon discovering another one of those hooks, then another and another. They ran down one entire side of the box.

  Her pulse tripped as she realized she’d just discovered a secret compartment, cleverly hidden in a place she’d looked at a hundred times over the years. Though a big part of her suspected she’d open the hooks, pull back the lining and find absolutely nothing, she couldn’t resist doing it, anyway.

  The hooks were old and slightly corroded, but they weren’t too difficult to tug apart. And as Jennifer undid them, one by one, she began to see the cream-colored edge of something stuffed between the dark wood box and the pale pink liner.

  “Paper,” she whispered, growing excited for some reason.

  She didn’t try to remove the thick sheaf of papers until all the liner had been pulled out of the way. When she did finally reach for them, she handled them carefully, seeing how fragile they were. Brown around the edges, torn in places, with curled corners, the things had to be decades old. From about the same time period as the rest of the treasures contained in the heart of the box.

  Unfolding them as delicately as she could, she held her breath, wondering if she was about to find Ivy’s confession. Or Eddie’s. Or even Leo’s.

  But it was none of those things. The top page was filled with lines and dots…staffs and treble clefs. Notes an
d sharps and flats.

  It was sheet music. Handwritten songs. That was all.

  She flipped to the next page, and the next, realizing they all contained the same thing…song after song, the notes, the scrawled words, smeared in black ink. Somebody’s music.

  The disappointment washing over her was almost palpable. She had found no secret involving her aunt, or even her mysterious late grandmother. No love letters, no ransom demands, no correspondence between Ivy and a missing Eddie.

  “Just songs,” she mumbled.

  Probably not even very good ones.

  Curious, she glanced at the first one, which wasn’t even titled, trying to mentally “hear” the musical notes. It had been years since she’d taken piano lessons, but still, she remembered enough to get a melody going in her head. For some reason, it came easily, her brain filling in the sequence before her eyes even fully scanned down the full measure.

  Odd how quickly she’d figured it out, considering how rusty she was. More odd that her mind had filled in subsequent notes before her eyes had even reached them. Maybe she shouldn’t have begged her mother to let her quit piano lessons when she was twelve.

  Trying to read the smeared black handwriting, which was so small as to be nearly illegible, she craned to make out the lyrics. It took a few words for her to grasp what she was seeing. When she did, she sucked in a surprised breath…because they were familiar.

  No wonder her mind had filled in the notes—this song had been a hit a few decades ago, and still occasionally turned up on oldies stations.

  She flipped to the next page, reading the notes, playing them on the piano keyboard in her head, and again trying to make out the lyrics. Somehow, she couldn’t manage any surprise when she realized it was another familiar tune. Another hit.

  The next sheet had no lyrics…. She recognized the sequence of notes in the very first bar, anyway. It had not only been a chart-topper in the seventies, it had recently been remade by one of those teenybopper, bubblegum blondes and had littered the airwaves for months a few years back.

  By the time she’d scanned through all the pages, Jen had to pause for a moment to take it in. She’d found some of the most popular songs of the past couple of decades.

  All written by hand. With scrawling notes and scratched out words in the lyrics. As if they’d been working copies.

  That wasn’t possible, of course. Even she, a relative music illiterate, knew these songs hadn’t all been written by the same person. They’d been performed in different decades, by a number of different groups. It made no sense that they’d all be here, all be connected.

  Still for some reason, an explanation was forming in the back of her brain. It traipsed across her thoughts, then raced away so she couldn’t grab and hold onto it.

  It wasn’t until she saw the small note on the last page that she was able to put it all together. And when she did, she dropped the sheets, utterly shocked. Because printed in the bottom right corner, in that same spiky scrawl, were these words: For Ivy. The love of my life.

  “Oh, my God.” Realizing she’d spoken too loudly, she cast a quick guilty glance down the hall toward the bedroom door. She did not want Mike to wake up right now and walk in here. Not until Jen figured out what all this meant.

  Because it appeared as if Eddie James had written these songs. He was a musician, the handwriting had been the same in the lyrics and in the brief love note to Ivy. Eddie had most certainly been in love with Ivy, judging by the soda-fountain picture. It had to have been Eddie.

  “Unless…Leo?” she said, a little dazed, a lot confused.

  Leo had also once been in love with Ivy, despite being a ruthless bastard. Yes, in his later years, he’d been a music producer. But from what she’d read, he’d started out as a performer, writing and singing his own stuff. So it was possible he’d written these compositions. There was just no way to know.

  It might not even matter, really, at this point. Except that these songs had been recorded by famous singers and groups for years and years. After Leo’s death. After Eddie’s disappearance.

  They’d been made famous. And they’d probably made the composer rich. But who was that composer?

  Sometime after that night in 1966 when Ivy and Leo’s mansion had burned to the ground, someone who’d had copies of this music had sold the rights to other musicians, probably making themselves very wealthy in the process. The royalty on music was much like the royalty on books, she assumed. Every time one of those babies played on a radio, the person who owned the rights to it dropped a few cents in his pocket.

  If Leo was the composer, how different might things have been if he’d not given up his own music to produce other people’s? And how tragic that he hadn’t lived to see how good his stuff really was.

  Could it also mean Eddie had killed him not just over Ivy but so he could steal his work?

  If Eddie had written them…had he gone on to live a fantasy life as some famous music mogul, living under an assumed name? Had he become wealthy and successful while hiding a dark secret—never able to return to his former life and the woman he loved for fear he’d be charged with murder?

  “This is going to drive me crazy,” she said, thrusting her hair away from her face as she stared blindly at the pages of musical history. She wouldn’t rest until she knew the truth.

  Who had sold the songs?

  And who had really written them?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Most people want to look good in their caskets. So a betrayed wife with a handsome, cheating husband is really doing him a favor by bumping him off while he’s still attractive and virile. Unless, of course, she uses a chain saw. Then they’ll probably keep the casket closed.

  —Why Arsenic Is Better Than Divorce by Jennifer Feeney

  MIKE NOTICED RIGHT AWAY that Jen was distracted the next morning. She looked tired. That was understandable; she’d gotten no more sleep than he had, and he felt completely wrung out. But she also appeared to have something on her mind.

  Since it was Saturday, they could have slept in, but his grandfather had called shortly after 8:00 a.m., saying he wanted to check in on Miss Feeney. He had pretended to be surprised that Mike had answered the phone so early.

  Right. As if Mike didn’t know his grandfather was just praying Jen had company here in the penthouse.

  After the call, Mutt had been unrelenting in his attention, needing to go out. This penthouse living was a pain in the ass as far as having pets went—no quick back-door escape for the dog. Mike had been forced to get dressed and take the animal down thirty stories to get him outside.

  When he got back, Jen had already been in the shower. A morning shower with her had sounded perfect, so he’d walked in the bathroom and knocked on the fogged-up door.

  She immediately swung around, looking startled.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s okay,” she murmured.

  He waited for her to open the door and invite him in. That was what she’d done a few mornings ago. They’d washed each other very thoroughly, each stroke made smoother by the warm water and the bubbly soap. Jen probably still had tile imprints on her back from when he’d lifted her up, put her legs around his waist and taken her right up against the shower wall.

  “I’m done,” she said, surprising him by reaching up and turning the water off. She obviously had something on her mind as she reached for a towel, quickly ran it over her body, then stepped out and slipped into her robe. “It’s all yours.”

  All his. The big, lonely shower. Meanwhile, a woman who’d been absolutely insatiable a few hours ago now barely spared him a glance as he stripped out of his clothes and took her place beneath the pulsing hot streams of water.

  Maybe it was a woman thing. He hated to play the PMS card, especially because she wasn’t being bitchy at all—just aloof—but he couldn’t make sense out of her mood. He didn’t think he’d done anything to piss her off between the second time he’d made love to
her last night and this morning. But with a woman who advocated killing men in print, he could never be sure.

  He was smiling at that thought as he showered, wondering what his brothers would think when they met Jen. They’d love her, he knew, but he imagined they’d be surprised Mike had chosen a woman so different from anyone he’d ever dated before.

  Chosen. As in, permanently.

  Why that sudden realization didn’t stun him, he didn’t know. Because sometime during the past few days, he’d begun to acknowledge how right everything was. How good it was to sleep beside her, wake up to her tousled hair and lazy smile. To come home to her at the end of the day. He liked living with her. Despite not wanting to stay here, in his grandfather’s place, he didn’t want to give that up. He didn’t want to give her up. Ever.

  “I’ll be damned,” he mumbled, wondering why he wasn’t frowning or running full speed ahead out the door at that self-realization. Instead, he wanted to stay—wanted to pull her back to bed and get them both sweaty enough to need another shower. Then make her breakfast and serve it to her on the patio.

  Then take her out and buy her an engagement ring.

  Imagining how she’d react if he told her what he was thinking, he turned off the water and grabbed his towel. She’d either take his hand and say sure, or push him off the balcony.

  Chuckling, he began to dry off, but had barely started when he heard the familiar ring of his cell phone from the bedroom.

  “Mike? I think that’s for you.”

  “Grab it for me, would you?” he asked as he quickly ran the towel over the rest of his body. “It’s in my laptop case.”

  She came in with the still-ringing phone a moment later, handed it to him, then hurried out. The look on her face was still in evidence—secretive and distracted—and now there was something else there, too. Her mouth had been pulled tight, a frown line visible between her eyes. When she’d gotten out of the shower, she’d been quiet. Now she seemed mad.

  It almost made him ignore the ringing of the phone and let it go to voice mail, but a quick glance at the caller ID convinced him to take the call. It was a friend he used to work with on Vice, and it could be important. “Mike Taylor,” he answered.