“Not a drop. She lived for her little girl, far as I could see.”
Lived for her little girl. I felt faint hearing the words.
“Damn, she must have been saving every penny, hoping things would change. But you know what? I’ve learned you never make it out of this profession alive. I mean, you either get killed, you die of disease, or you kill yourself.” She laughed. “But hell. We all die someday, right?”
Tears threatened to flow. I turned back to the mattress, my vision blurring as I pulled off pillowcases and bedding and added them to the growing stack. Then I left with the wicker basket to the next room, before Franny would piece things together and identify me.
The next morning, as I swept cobwebs, spiders, and bugs from the outside walls, I listened to conversations of guests. As fishermen ate blueberry–wild rice pancakes and fried walleye on the screen porch, I worked out of view below, sweeping off the whitewashed clapboard from ground level.
“Guess she went missing a few days ago.”
“Most folks are glad to have their birds fly the coop.”
“Not in this case. I mean, we’re talking the senator.”
“Yeah, when our train pulled in, his missus was crying and fussing at the ticket counter. Fella there told her he never sold the girl a ticket, no matter what that lady wanted to believe.”
“I say, they want to go, let ’em go!”
Then their conversation turned. “Hey, what’s going on with Ernie’s blind pig? Heard he was up here producin’ like gangbusters, and then no sign of him. He was back thataway last year. Did he keel over or run off with the booze?”
“Bootleggin’ has its risks.”
“And its rewards! Ha!”
I had no idea who Ernie was and didn’t care, so I quit listening. Toward the bay, the sound of an auctioneer’s voice floated out from a megaphone as he sought to command good prices for boxes of fish. “Whitefish, fresh this morning from Eckhart’s Fisheries! Packed with ice and ready to ship, guaranteed fresh . . .”
I moved along down the eastern side of the hotel, sweeping high and low, my neck aching. This morning the dandelion spiders were enjoying the sunshine on the siding. I swept them down, along with an occasional wolf spider, and round-bellied spiders and flies caught in their webs. The day before, the building was covered in a fresh hatch of tiny, gray moth-like bugs. Every day, the lake delivered up a new hatch of something or other.
I kept sweeping and mulled over the men’s conversation. So the Worthingtons—or at least Elizabeth Worthington—cared that I was missing. This news surprised me. Her concern touched me, and a pang of guilt pinched my conscience. But I doubted Mr. Worthington cared. I couldn’t see how I could be of concern to him. Except for that late-night conversation when he and Ennis had worried about what I’d remembered.
And then as I swept, a memory nudged and pushed from deep within, like an earthworm burrowing through dense decayed matter to reach the surface. I felt lightheaded. I set the broom against the building and rubbed my temples, trying to shake an impending headache. Shadows licked at the edges of my memory. Surfacing, surfacing, surfacing. And then, there it was, in the light of day.
Behind the parlor stove—sometime earlier that same night—I had peered out from my corner to see two men alone in the parlor, speaking in hushed tones.
“She drank too much and she hit her head,” Ennis said, kneading his large hands. “Can’t let this trace back to me. Understand?”
“Got it.”
“And what about the kid?”
I burrowed under my blankets, pretending to be sleeping. I stayed put, eyes closed, still as ice. Someone stepped closer to my hiding place, breathing, looking down on me, then retreated by a few steps.
Worthington replied. “Don’t worry. She’s out like a lamp.”
I picked up my broom, in case Darla or Agnes could spot me from a window and scold me for not working. Franny said Mama never drank. Then why would Ennis, who must have been there when Mama died, say otherwise?
I swept, brooding.
No matter how many details I pieced together, no matter what injustices I uncovered, I never would be able to prove anything. No one would listen to a girl of sixteen recounting her memories as a young child in a brothel.
Just last night Meg, whose upper bunk was directly across from mine, leaned toward the edge and told me about some of the secrets she’d learned since she’d started at the hotel. She witnessed Daisy one morning last summer with bright red finger marks around her neck after a night’s work. Darla made Daisy wear silk scarves until the marks healed. “Someone thought it would be entertaining to choke her,” Meg said. “And then just last fall, they found Scarlett—another working lady here—facedown in the woods one morning.”
“Dead?” I asked reluctantly. We were whispering over Agnes’s snoring below and Juju’s random talking in her sleep.
“What do you think? Think she was on the ground sniffin’ slugs? Of course she was dead! Some jerk had taken a knife to her after he did his business and then just left her there to rot.”
My stomach rolled. “Did they ever catch who—?”
“You bet. Wasted no time stringing him up out here from a tall pine.”
“So when there’s trouble, the sheriff must come out here—” I ventured, relieved that there was justice for such crimes.
“No, it was frontier style. You bet. Only sheriff or law enforcement that come out here are the ones who want to spend their dimes on the ladies and booze. Or check in on their investments. How else do you think blind pigs and rum running are going to happen? That’s why they don’t see a thing, even though it’s right under everybody’s noses.” She huffed. “You sure don’t know much of anything, do you, Catherine?”
I didn’t know what to say. She was right. My life had been so protected with the Worthingtons.
Time after time, when I’d sat in the corner reading at the lake cottage, Mrs. Worthington would sip tea with her friends and explain how I’d come into their lives. “Oh, Walter made something right out of that tragedy,” she would say. And then she’d go on about how he’d reformed Ranier after they’d found ‘that woman pickled with alcohol.’”
Reaching the hotel’s eastern edge, I swept down the last remaining cobwebs and fish flies, and then headed in through the kitchen’s back door.
Chapter 21
I did my utmost not to draw attention to myself. When I was asked to set tables at the restaurant, I made sure I finished before serving hours. When I was asked to deliver an item to a hotel room, such as a bowl of soup or a pot of tea to one of the working ladies or a customer, I kept my head bowed and stayed clear of questions. My skills at not speaking came in handy. All I had to do was not open my mouth, and soon people stopped their attempts at small talk.
One afternoon, when a steady rain soaked the earth and dampened the air, I found an excuse to deliver water to Franny’s hotel room. She was without a customer, and I closed the door behind me. I filled her water pitcher and then put my water pail next to the door. I didn’t want to risk telling Franny the truth about my interest in Bella Rose, but my need to know burned in me like white coals. I had to take a chance.
“Franny, my name’s not really Catherine.”
In a lavender robe, she sat on the edge of the brass four-poster bed, her legs crossed. “You think that’s big news? None of us girls uses our real name. It’s too personal, if you know what I mean.”
“You’re not Franny?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. My given name is Chastity.”
“Chastity? You’re kidding.”
“Don’t laugh, and don’t ever tell a soul.”
“I promise. I won’t say a word. But then you have to keep my secret, too.”
Like an impatient cat flicking its tail, Franny wiggled the toes
on her crossed leg. “So, you gonna tell me or what?”
I glanced up at the tin ceiling, then met Franny’s eyes. “I’m Sadie Rose. Bella’s daughter.”
Silence filled the space between us. Not even Franny’s toes moved.
“That’s why I need to know . . .”
“Well, what d’you say.” Franny began coughing, deep and retching. I waited until she regained herself. When she did, she reached for a pack of Lucky Strikes on her nightstand, put one between her fingers, and lit it. She inhaled, studying me, smoke billowing around her. “Now that you say it, you do resemble her, you know. I’m surprised Darla hasn’t figured out who you are by now. But—lots of people come and go around here—and that was a long time ago. So you wanna know . . .”
I nodded and swallowed around the dryness in my throat.
“Okay, you asked for it. For starters, she was Ennis’s favorite.”
“Ennis? You’re sure?” Though I was relieved to have Franny confirm my memory of Ennis and Worthington talking in the brothel parlor that night, my stomach rolled at the idea that Ennis had taken extra interest in my mother. His favorite.
She glared at me. “What? You think he’s above a little pokin’ around? Hell. He’s been Darla’s biggest supporter. It was E. W. Ennis who kicked your mother out of her own house after your father died. They’d been renting one of those little bungalows near the grocery store in Ranier. But with her husband suddenly gone, she couldn’t pay the rent to Ennis. She had just had a baby—well, I guess that would have been you, wouldn’t it?” She scowled at me. “She was skinny, scared. It was the middle of March, and she was kicked out into the street.”
I didn’t remember sitting down, but there I was, sitting in my skirt on the rug near Franny’s unmade bed. Trying to absorb what I didn’t want to hear.
“Of course, she had no money. No place to go. No family. What I know is that it was Darla who eventually offered her a place to stay and work.”
Forced onto the streets, with a new baby and grieving her husband, who could say what anyone would do? What if I suddenly had a baby to feed and clothe? For years, I’d tried so hard to distance myself from her, but now I realized . . . if it hadn’t been for a baby, hadn’t been for me, Mama’s situation might have been different. Over the years I’d absorbed Elizabeth Worthington’s judgments against her. I wanted to apologize. Forgive me, Mama. Forgive me.
“That Bella Rose. We wanted to hate her—he had her all dressed up like she was upper crust—but she was no better than the rest of us. And then, because she never drank, well, she seemed a little too good for the rest of us, y’know what I mean?”
Franny turned back to her vanity, pulled an amber bottle from one of the small drawers, took one swig, then another, and put the bottle back.
“But I don’t get it,” I said. “If Ennis kicked her out onto the street, why would she later have anything to do with him?”
She shrugged. “Hey, Darla sends us our customers. You think we have a say? Hell, we’re so in debt for every stitch of clothing, every meal, every drop of liquor. Oh yeah, she knows how to keep us close to her skirts, she does. Honey, all I know is that in time, Ennis took to that Bella and made sure he was her only client. But then one night, they had this huge fight. Oh, he took her down a notch all right. She must have thought she could get out, because he was raging like a bull at her. ‘You can’t leave!’ he kept yelling. And ‘I own you!’ But she was shouting right back. ‘Your money can’t stop me this time!’ Well, maybe his money didn’t do it, but he stopped her. Lots of crashing and knocking around, and then it went quiet. Awfully quiet,” she said, letting her meaning sink in, “if you know what I mean.”
I closed my eyes.
“Hey, kid, you okay?”
Arms clasped around my knees, a familiar pain, the color of blood, seeped in at the periphery of my brain. My head began to throb.
“Listen, this isn’t something you go telling anyone. I figure, you’re her daughter, you deserve to know. But you aren’t going to bring your mother back from the dead. And you’ll only get a shitload of trouble for yourself—and me—if you start talking about Ennis. It’s water under the bridge now, got it?”
I opened my eyes.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t known but, rather, what I found so strangely unsettling and reassuring was that something deep inside me already knew.
Had somehow known all along.
“What brought you out here, anyway?” Juju looked over my shoulder as I prepped chickens for baking. As Agnes had ordered, I rubbed their skins with butter and stuffed the birds with a mixture of breadcrumbs, herbs, chopped celery, and onion.
I didn’t want to make up an answer, so I just didn’t answer. I kept stuffing chickens as if I didn’t hear.
“I think she’s a little slow,” Juju whispered to Agnes.
I was glad to have work.
That evening turned warm, humid, and sticky. Where my apron strap tied at the small of my back, a tiny river of sweat flowed. The kitchen steamed as I emptied hot water into the sinks and washed the last of the supper dishes. As I wiped my red hands on the cotton towel, hoping to call it a night and head to my cabin, Agnes held out a bowl of green olives. When the Worthingtons had set out tables of food for holiday entertaining, I sneaked olives as greedily as a squirrel after acorns. I wondered where this year’s holiday would find me. Certainly not helping to decorate the Christmas tree at the Summit Avenue home.
“Before you leave,” Agnes said, her thin hair plastered with sweat, “bring these to the tavern. They’re going through ’em faster than candy!”
In the small mirror by the kitchen’s back door, I shot a glance at myself. I looked like I had been standing in a downpour. My fasionable bob clung in strands to the sides of my face. Swell. I mopped sweat droplets from my forehead and neck. Then I carried the plate through the parlor to the back hallway toward the sound of pounding piano keys.
Caveman, barefoot as always, tipped his hat at me in the dim hallway as we crossed paths.
When I stepped into the tavern, I felt dozens of men gaze in my direction. I kept my head down, but in one peripheral glance, I took in the long mahogany bar and rows of glistening liquor bottles; the bartender with his shiny bald crown; paintings of topless women looking down from the walls on a room filled with men of all ages and hotel ladies with sleeveless, short dresses. I expected to see a piano player but instead music blared from a nickelodeon—like an armoire with stained-glass doors, from behind which notes were struck on rolling sheets. I’d only seen them advertised in Mrs. Worthington’s magazines.
And that’s when I spotted E. W. Ennis at a high table, sitting tall and proud as well-fed royalty, along with another man and two women.
I nearly dropped the bowl.
“You’re a cherub!” the bartender said, meeting me at the end of his counter. “We’re cookin’ with gas tonight!”
With shaky hands, I released the bowl into his. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t turn away.
Mr. Ennis was smiling and gesturing grandly. At his side was Linnea, her blonde hair in tight curls, one arm loose around Mr. Ennis’s shoulder, and leaning in close, as if living by his every word. He patted her rump, then grabbed his drink. He was married with two daughters. I didn’t want to see this any more than I wanted to think that Mama had once been his favorite. She, too, had been forced to act as if she enjoyed his company.
Before he could spot me, I forced myself away, pivoted, and hurried out into the hallway, ignoring a low whistle and a pinch by one of the men near the doorway. Face flushed warm, I walked down the wainscot-paneled hallway with amber glass lamps toward the back porch. I couldn’t get back to my cabin fast enough.
Caveman, however, now occupied the wicker chair near the door. He stretched his walking stick across the door, as if to keep me prison
er. He was a most curious fellow. Just the day before, Meg had led me beyond the hotel to show me where he lived. His home was a cave in the ground covered with boards and canvas. And like so many other bootleggers around the hotel, his moonshine still was visible through the brush. Its barrel and stovepipe were almost in plain view. She said Caveman had originally come from England and then went off to volunteer in the Great War, despite being older than any other soldier. He returned changed, lost all feeling in his feet from being gassed by the Germans, and that’s why he now roamed shoeless and in dirt-soiled clothes. But no one knew his story for sure, so Meg said it was pieced together since Caveman refused to talk about his past.
Now he studied me. “You’re in a bloody hurry, Miss Catherine.”
I nodded. I thought he might start joking with me, but his tone was weighty.
“Better to face what’s chasing you,” he said, “than to flee.”
He had an uncanny way of knowing what was going on around the hotel. I eyed the door and frowned.
“Unless it’s Brandy that’s after you.”
I forced a weak smile.
“Dear girl, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe I have,” I whispered.
“Ah, let me guess. The famed industrialist, am I right?” Caveman lifted and lowered his walking stick, as if taunting me. “Some say he’s responsible for murder. Did you know that?”
My legs nearly buckled. “You know about Bella Rose?”
Caveman shook his head. “I’ve heard about her. Who knows what happened in her case?” He shrugged. “No, I meant the photographer. Her husband.”
“What?” I glanced over my shoulder, hoping E. W. himself wasn’t going to suddenly appear. I recalled Fred Foxridge telling me he’d bought photography equipment from my mother after her husband had died. But murder?
“What are you saying?”
“Frank Ladovitch—that was his name. You might say his subject matter changed. You see, he started photographing the landscape, too. He took photos of shorelines before and after they’d been logged. And he sent those photos off to magazines—big ones. And it didn’t go over well, you see. Some thought he was interfering with logging, and they didn’t want photographs changing public opinion—which has a way of changing laws. He was found floating in the middle of the lake. The local paper said suicide, even though he was a fine swimmer.”
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