“And he hid it in the grave,” said Oliver. “Whyn’t he retrieve it then? It’s been more than twenty years. Surely he could have found a buyer in all that time?”
Rebekah blinked at the man. “He perished, I imagine.”
“From the curse?”
Skinner leaned in to speak. “Look around you, man. This whole town has crumbled to ruins in barely a generation. Think of it. Lily Joy is murdered and buried in an unmarked grave. Then her killer buries The Juliet with her.”
Oliver finished the thought. “And almost immediately the town enters a decline from which it never recovers. That is quite a tale.”
“You have doubts, of course,” said Rebekah. “When she has recovered, I will call on the spirit for confirmation. I have a feeling that Lily Joy is much relieved tonight. She has been found and parted from this wicked jewel.”
“And now it’s yours. I suppose you’ll put it on display here at the hotel.”
“You said yourself, we have two ghosts and a redhead. And now we have The Juliet. I cannot imagine a more spiritually charged destination for the curious traveler.”
“My checkbook already feels a little lighter,” said Oliver. “How do you expect to protect yourself against the curse?”
Rebekah said, “Lily Joy, Mollina Grease, and I make quite a powerful team, I think. I’ve learned some strategies, both from the indigenous population and from the gypsies of my youth. Now that we know what we’re up against, I fully expect that we can exorcise The Juliet. Or, at the very least, contain her potential.”
“That sounds risky, ma’am.”
“I suppose it does. But what else can we do? Someone has to take responsibility.”
“Won’t the owners want The Juliet returned? The famous little Stieg girls are women now with families of their own, I expect.”
Skinner was too ready for the question. “They might, if they didn’t care for their own safety. Even if they reclaimed her, we still have the story.”
“Quite true.” Oliver leaned back. “I advise you to invest in a good replica, in any case. I know some excellent craftsmen who might do the job.”
Skinner liked the sound of that. “Does that mean we have your support, Mr. Oliver?”
“It means I’m impressed, Mr. Skinner. I suppose there is more to discuss,” he said. “Gentleman to gentleman.”
Skinner called for brandy. “I believe the ladies are ready to retire, after such an evening.”
Rebekah acquiesced. “I suppose the hour is late.” She stood and Oliver rushed over to kiss her hand in the antique fashion. He was mocking her, of course, but no one needed to know that.
* * *
They played cards in the lounge. They used red, gold, and blue chips.
“Hobart, I hope your accommodations are satisfactory?”
“Indeed. You’ve converted the loges with ingenuity and panache.” In truth the apartments were overly stuffed with art and furnishings. “The bed is enormous, and the decorations are extravagant. Should I stumble tonight I will never reach the floor.”
“Excellent. You have no complaint, then.”
“None other than I am drunk and cash poor.” Oliver surveyed the chip piles, chuckling at his meager gains. “Perhaps this game is over.”
Skinner automatically dismissed the night man after ordering him to refill their glasses.
When the servant was gone, Oliver said, “The Juliet, eh?” He raised his tumbler and tilted it to catch the light. “Gems and jewelry have always been an interest of mine. And Morecambe, he was a great one.”
Skinner lowered his last hand of cards. “Was he? I’m unschooled in such things. I had heard the setting was overwhelming.”
“You mean grotesque.” Oliver set his glass down and tapped the tabletop. “Maybe I’m sentimental. I grew up in the city, and I remember we used to stand in front of jewelry stores for hours staring at the displays. You’re from back east, Mr. Mayor. Have you ever done that, linger in front of fancy shops and stare at everything that was going on inside?”
Skinner maintained a bland expression. “My father kept me busy.”
“Ah, that is too bad. Boys need to dream. My father made a point of telling me stories, stoking my imagination. He’d take me to Morecambe’s every Christmas. You can see where I’m headed, right?”
Skinner was silent.
“Those little girls in their furs, like princesses… Anyway, Pop had a pal that worked at Morecambe’s, a guy they called Lucky because he was specifically hired to guard The Juliet. See, his name was Lucien, and we all thought he would be struck down by the curse, but it never happened. So you know, he was Lucky.”
Skinner’s eyes deadened with each detail. “You have seen The Juliet before.”
Oliver grinned, “Well, to be honest, Lucky would sometimes let us in the store after hours. I actually played with the thing. What you see as grotesque, I see as a treasure from my childhood.” He leaned forward. “But when Morecambe passed, The Juliet went missing again, and so did Lucky. We all assumed the temptation got to him. You remember all that?”
The Mayor said, “I suppose so. I’m not the enthusiast you seem to be. The stones have quite a colorful and sometimes confusing history.”
Oliver reached over and picked up the deck of playing cards. “Maybe one more hand.” He shuffled for a good long while before dealing a hand, and the play was slow. He said, “A couple of years ago I went looking for Lucky. And I found him.”
Skinner turned his cards down. His eyes closed.
“Lucky’d changed his name and moved into a guardian hut in the Camargue. I suppose he was pretending to be a French cowboy. It was pretty easy to find him. He wasn’t the most imaginative fellow in the world.”
“He did not have The Juliet?”
“No he did not. Lucky Jilka was a thief, no doubt about it. He got away with his pockets full of Morecambe’s diamonds, enough to keep him in cheese and horse stew for the rest of his life out there on the marsh, but he swore up and down he did not steal The Juliet. I believed him, based on the palpability of his hatred. After guarding The Juliet for years and years, he developed strong emotions about her. Lucky despised that green bitch. Wanted nothing to do with her.”
Skinner nodded like an old horse. “It would be foolish to steal something so notorious.”
“Wouldn’t it though? Still, I always thought two and two added up.”
Oliver swept aside his chips before he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted a cord-bound leather wallet. He opened it carefully and withdrew a folded piece of paper that was being used to protect a piece of old, yellowed newsprint that he then placed on the table.
It was a picture cut out of a tabloid, and it was very old. It showed two little girls in fur coats and an old man kneeling with them as they all gazed at an object that was identified in the caption as The Juliet.
Skinner wouldn’t look.
The smiles of joy on the faces of the twins were genuine, and the old jeweler beamed with pride. Everything else was obscured by shadow and age, even The Juliet herself.
“See that fellow in the back? He’s just an outline, like one of those spirit photographs. A ghost.” Oliver’s voice softened. “Look at his posture, his bearing. That peculiar tilt of the head.”
Skinner could take no more. He’d opened his eyes and was now glaring at his guest. All traces of his desert captain’s drawl had vanished. “It’s a twenty-five-year-old piece of fish wrap, you fool, not a Degas.”
Oliver tapped the crumbling paper, and a truly joyful expression filled his face. “Martin,” he said. “Do you miss them? The girls, I mean.”
At last, Hobart Oliver had won the night. Had finished the night. The old man’s eyes brimmed with tears.
* * *
Hobart lay atop the coverlet, fully dressed. He was sleepless but justified. The Juliet stones were tucked inside the leather wallet in his jacket, and h
is man would collect him at dawn. A gun lay on the nightstand just in case Dellaire changed his mind. Oliver didn’t envy the old man, but still he wished he could stick around long enough to watch him try to explain to his wife, over a delicious breakfast, how he lost the emeralds in a late night, drunken hand of cards.
The Skinners picked him, so it was their fault. They could have pulled this stunt with any moneyed fool, but they wanted to spice the pot with old obligations and a perverse nostalgia. Hobart knew for some time that the Mayor must have been the old lawyer Dellaire, and that he possessed The Juliet, but it wasn’t until they tried to squeeze him that he devised a plan to take her for himself. It was their doing, this loss. They were too bold.
They thought he felt guilty about Mollina. So guilty he couldn’t think straight? So guilty he’d believe in their Ghost Show? Ridiculous. He had regrets, but not the sort that amounted to guilt. They deserved to lose The Juliet.
And that poor girl Sarah, forced to perform antics. Did she even know the purpose? He remembered first meeting Mollina Grease on a makeshift studio lot, and how she, by way of impromptu audition, launched into a series of joyless but expert backflips and cartwheels. Her father had taught her that. Both Sarah and Mollina were monkeys, not girls.
Hobart thought himself incapable of sleep, but he drifted into that space between here and there, where the wall between reality and the dream state was permeable. Several times he jolted awake, the pillow damp under his cheek. He slept only in hard moments. The sun wasn’t up but crows were calling, and he struggled to the surface. He had to be ready when his driver came.
Crows to call the dawn. The drink and lack of real sleep had left his muscles stiff and heavy. He walked to the small window of his chamber, and pulled the brocade curtain aside. The black night was indigo in the periphery. It wouldn’t be long now.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but his room featured a dramatic view of Centenary. He could see the whole of the town in blue shadows, foundations and lot lines and broken buildings spilling down the valley. The glass pane fogged under his nose, and Hobart realized he was leaning on the sill, trying to see as much as he could. In the distance, the ridge cut a pale line that made the horizon seem stitched together. That was where the sun would rise, bleeding pink and buzzing with power.
He pulled open the window, and along with the cool rush of predawn air came more complaints from the crows.
Then Hobart realized it wasn’t birdcall after all. An unmistakably feminine voice, far away, called out, “No, no, no.”
He leaned out, almost forgetting himself.
“No, no.” The emotion was strong but unclear. The caller was hovering in between pain and grief.
Night was washing away like a stain. Soon Hobart saw a white-clad figure, so tiny that she had to be at the base of the valley wall. The white of the garment changed shape, almost like a flag in the breeze. Hobart surmised that it was Rebekah in her nightclothes, down by Lily Joy’s grave.
“No sir, no!”
But that was not Rebekah’s voice. The figure seemed to be dancing or struggling, fixed to one spot. Something or someone was holding her there. Hobart couldn’t make out much more, just the unnatural flutter of white and the clear cries of a girl in bad circumstances.
Sarah, then. For a mad moment, Hobart imagined taking the girl with him back to Hollywood.
He put on his jacket and collected his gun before making his way down a tight spiral of dark iron stairs retained from the old theater days. The hotel was utterly unlit and silent, and not even the help was awake yet. He was not quite sure where the Skinners’ chambers were, but he tread as quietly as he could while keeping speed.
The oak door of the main entry was locked, so Hobart traced back through the lounge and the kitchen where he found the rear door ajar.
Once outside, Hobart skirted the perimeter of the Opera House until he reached the front façade on High Street. He no longer viewed the valley with the comprehensive clarity afforded by his room window, but he could still hear Sarah. She was sobbing now.
Hobart ran down Penance, kicking up dusty plumes. He paused to gauge the direction of the girl’s distress, but all along he’d known where he was headed. There was a foolish inevitability to all this. He was returning to the spot where they’d unearthed The Juliet. He slowed his progress to a heavy pace. Perhaps he was just a rube after all.
It was a trap. Some new way to settle the score. Hobart stalled to catch his breath and listened to the girl weep. Her sobs echoed off the canyon wall.
He couldn’t decide if Sarah was a willing participant in the ruse, or if the Skinners were capable of hurting her for their own gains. He would proceed, hoping they did not know he was armed.
Hobart passed the ruined jail walls and turned. Sarah was in the clearing wearing a long white nightgown that was too large for her. She seemed to be alone, but she was crying. She was surrounded by a circle of white stones on the ground, so bright in the gloom that they looked painted.
Sarah seemed unaware of Hobart. She walked forward, but the gown pulled her back before she could cross the line of stones. It was as if some unseen fist had grabbed up a handful of her nightclothes.
“Sarah!”
She turned in Hobart’s direction and gasped. She ran to him, tearing away where the gown was caught. The sound of rending fabric was almost comical. Sarah threw herself around Hobart’s waist, more child than woman. Instinct forced him to hold her tight and stroke her hair, despite his wariness. “Why are you here, girl?”
She sniveled and shook her head. It was a mystery to her. “I awoke here, on that ground. My feet are bleeding.”
Her gown was torn from shoulders to rump, and Hobart was embarrassed for her. He disentangled himself from the girl and approached the ring of stones. It was indeed the same spot where he had dug up The Juliet. Upon closer inspection he saw the stones formed and oval, not a circle, and if the implication wasn’t clear enough, at one end was planted a fresh made wooden cross. A shred of the girl’s gown was stuck where the boards were fastened together.
He smelled varnish, and in the gloom he could barely read the letters on the transverse board, but he knew what they spelled out.
Well done, he thought. Who had made this thing, and in so little time?
“So I’m to believe that you awoke atop the grave of Lily Joy and felt yourself bound there?” Hobart sighed. “You were caught on a nail.”
She reached around and felt for the torn gap. “I didn’t know.”
“You were frightened.”
“I was frightened.” She would say the lines he wrote for her, just as well as she spoke the Skinners’ script.
The idea of taking her away was enticing.
Sarah came for him again, arms out and grasping, and now he could see her bare feet, wrecked as a martyr’s. She teetered on the rocks, and Hobart moved to catch her before she collapsed. In his arms she was the perfect ingénue; her legs failed, forcing him to carry her upright, and it was as he struggled to transport Sarah to more level ground that he felt the barrel of a pistol kiss him between his shoulder blades.
His face was close to Sarah’s. Her eyes were open. Aware. He dropped her to the ground where she produced a shout of protest but no more. Hobart straightened, smoothed out his jacket, reflexively caressing the bulge of the wallet containing The Juliet.
The touch of the pistol on his back was gentle but steady. He said to the air in front of him, “Do you have instructions?”
“Surprisingly few.” It was Rebekah Skinner.
Sarah remained on the ground but had moved back for a better view. Dawn was coming fast now, and while they were still deep in the cool shadow of the canyon wall, the pink tiles of the Opera House began to glow.
“May I turn to face you, Rebekah?”
“You used to call me Becky.”
“Becky.” Hobart had his own pistol nestled in the breast pocket opposite The Juliet, and his d
river was due soon enough. He felt sure he would escape this moment, but he wasn’t so sure that his hostess would. He pivoted slowly to engage her, eye to eye.
Rebekah wore a mauve satin dressing gown, tailored for her curves—a surprisingly modern garment given the circumstances. Hobart wondered if the Skinners, in private life, were more attached to the present than they let on. Her hair was loose but perfectly combed and arranged over the peaked shoulders of the gown, and her slippers, black with red Chinese embroidery, were impeccable, showing no sign of having traveled through the rubble to reach this improvised cemetery. What he really admired was her choice of gun. He stared at the simple Colt revolver—a police gun. She held it like she was used to holding it. He thought she’d be carrying some Wild West-styled peacemaker or a tiny ladies’ pistol with pearl details. His own weapon, a Derringer with a mere three-inch barrel was not nearly so practical.
“Let me guess. You’ll say I ravaged this poor child.” He nodded towards Sarah.
Rebekah wasn’t interested in satisfying his curiosity. “You carry The Juliet on your person, I assume.”
He let her assumption lie. “It hasn’t been so long since we were friends. You were a different sort of woman then. Looking for your destiny, I think. Or is that a tacky sentiment?” He’d never seen a more stable hand than hers. He recalled the Mayor’s tears. They were quite a couple, perfectly matched. “Mollina had your heart.”
“You’re playing with fire. Again.”
“Now you are so confident, as if life’s curiosity has been sated, somehow. Interesting. The effect of nurturing a secret for so long, I suppose.”
Rebekah nodded towards Lily Joy’s fresh made grave and smiled. “You know nothing about secrets. I wouldn’t place such a high value on them, considering how plentiful they are.”
Sarah sat up in the dirt and wrapped her arms around her knees, beaming at the woman with the gun. The girl looked as if she was listening to a Christmas poem.
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