The Woman in the Camphor Trunk

by Jennifer Kincheloe

  She took the pail from Joe, removed the checkered cloth and lid, and dumped the head of Ko Chung into the muddy water. It went under with a splash and then popped up again like a fishing bobber. The current caught it. They watched it being swept off toward the ocean in the moonlight. She threw the pail into the river as far and as hard as she could, along with her gloves, which were lined with sable and had been expensive. On a matron’s salary, without her father’s money, she could not afford to replace them. Joe bowed his head and muttered some holy words about mercy and Ko Chung’s soul. Anna didn’t pray, because Chinese people had gods of their own, and she didn’t speak their language. Anna and Joe stood until the floating orb was no longer visible, and then they simply watched the rushing river.

  She took a bar of lye soap out of her pocket, and they both knelt to scrub hands and arms to the elbow. When their skin was good and red, Anna threw the soap into the silty water, and it dropped like a stone. She slipped her arm through Joe’s, and they gingerly picked their way up stream, he in his boots, she in her tarry, sandy, muddy, and very expensive heeled shoes.

  When they had gone a fair distance upriver, Joe shook his head. “You’re a lucky girl, Sherlock. A very lucky girl.”

  “Why?”

  “Wolf knew you were hiding something in that bucket. If you weren’t comely, you’d be out of a job.”

  “He didn’t suspect me.”

  “He excused you, hoping you’d let him spoon with you in the stables.”

  “You don’t think very highly of Detective Wolf. Aren’t you friends?”

  “I’m a realist, and you are an innocent.”

  Anna’s mouth dropped open. “Innocent? Hah. I think you know what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen. I’ve been badly trampled by the world. Not the least of all by you.”

  Joe’s voice rose an octave. “What did I do?”

  “You knew I was back in town and you haven’t called. And when I called on you, you didn’t answer the door.”

  “Anna, it was midnight.”

  “So, you were home.”

  “Listen, you broke my heart, not the other way around. So forgive me if I’m not at your beck and call—”

  “You said you loved me, and you aren’t loving me.”

  Joe said nothing.

  Anna slid closer and smiled. “So love me.” She rose on tiptoes and kissed him. She knew that Joe Singer was particularly susceptible to kissing, and, though he was angry, lips could make everything right. Also, he was delicious. So Anna kissed him until he kissed her back. Her kiss was melting fiery, and burned with all the intensity of their situation, and all the passion required to overcome it—his pain, her scars, their abandonment, and a severed head floating down the river.

  Anna’s kiss promised everything, even intimate things she didn’t fully understand. She could feel Joe’s heart pounding, but his arms stayed at his sides. His lips were no longer puckering, though his pants were.

  Joe took her by both arms and set her away from him, breathing like he’d just run a race.

  Anna’s eyes widened. This was not like Joe Singer. The only thing Joe liked better than spooning was, well, nothing.

  Joe said, “You don’t want my love, Anna. You just want to make love.”

  Anna’s cheeks burned as if he’d slapped her. She crossed her arms across her breasts. “You make it sound like I’m a vampire.”

  Joe looked away from Anna and stared at the water’s edge. He said nothing, but Anna knew what he was thinking—that she was the biggest vamp in the history of vamps. A vamp’s vamp. A vamp’s vamp’s vamp.” She felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes, but cops never cried, and so neither would she. “Well, say something.”

  “Anna, I’m courting someone else.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I want a wife. You made it clear that you would never marry me. That was fifteen minutes after declaring your love, and a month after you’d run off to marry somebody else, after kissing me like a love-crazed nymph, right after telling me you couldn’t associate with me.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “I’m not a rubber ball, Anna. If you won’t marry me, what am I supposed to do? Sit at home and cry about it?”

  “I have dreams—”

  “I have dreams, too.”

  “Who are you courting, then?” It seemed silly to ask. Anna didn’t know any of the girls in Joe’s working-class set. She’d only been working class for two months. She exclusively knew rich society girls and prostitutes.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Well, you’re too late, so you may as well tell me.” The sky began pelting her with heavy raindrops.

  He hesitated. “There’s a girl who works at the piano store.”

  Anna’s insides began to swirl like turbulent water. She had seen that pretty piano girl. She had heard them sing a duet, all cozy on a piano bench.

  Joe cleared his throat. “And my third cousin, Betty. Then there’s Wolf’s neighbor, and . . .” He glanced up, looking pained, and stopped when he saw her expression. Anna’s face was twisted. She almost couldn’t breathe.

  He sighed a miserable sigh. “Anna, it could have been you, but you didn’t want me.”

  She choked back a sob.

  Joe closed his eyes. “Aw Anna. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.”

  She sniffed her snuffly nose with indignation. “I’m not.”

  And then, Anna did what any girl would do in her situation, thrown off by a man who had once said he loved her, a man who had held her and kissed her and put his hand on her bottom, a man who wordlessly implied that she was a vampire when he himself was courting half the girls in Los Angeles.

  She took a swing at Joe Singer’s pretty face, slipped on the muddy bank, and went down on her backside in a particularly mucky spot. She squeaked and slid toward the water.

  “Oh Lord.” Joe leapt after her, bent over, and lent her his hand.

  She grabbed it and, with a grunt, yanked him hard. It was a rather effective yank. Joe went hurtling down the muddy slope, slipped, and fell into the cold river. Anna gasped as he splashed, and covered her mouth with her dirty palm, leaving streaks of mud on her lips and chin. She hadn’t actually meant to throw him into the water. It had turned out better than she’d planned. His wool uniform was wet to the collar, and he would surely smell like a sheep. It was but a tiny ray of sunlight in the darkest of nights.

  Joe stood, rushing water to his thighs, and glared at her.

  She stood clumsily and kicked the riverbank, sending mud splattering onto his angry face. “I love you!”

  “If you really loved me, you’d marry me.”

  “Marriage is tantamount to a license to boss me. It would make me your slave. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t ask.”

  “Just because I’m supposed to boss you, doesn’t mean I would.”

  “You already do.”

  Anna lifted her skirts, and clambered up the hill, slipping and sliding, her bottom, and now her hands and knees, brown with mud. “Biscuits!” She pulled herself up by a fig tree’s roots, and then spun around to face him.

  Joe was climbing out of the water, soaked to the skin. He held out his dripping arms and gestured to his wet uniform. “I could arrest you for this.”

  “Go ahead, Officer Singer. Arrest me, handcuff me, throw me in the hoosegow. Hang me, even, because I don’t care. I . . . I hope you die.”

  Anna gasped and put a hand to her mouth. She regretted the curse the moment it left her lips. She crossed herself in an attempt to undo it, but it was too late. Once you speak a thing, you can’t take it back.

  Joe let out a hollow laugh. “I reckon I will, Sherlock. We all die sometime. But I’m not gonna let you be the one who kills me.”

  “Fine, because I wouldn’t kill you for all the tea in China. I . . . I’d rather love a Chihuahua. And I will.”

  Anna presented him with her muddy backside and strode off up the bank. Joe passed her in
three big steps. When he reached the field, he headed in a direction away from the station.

  Anna’s voice cracked. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to warn the Chihuahuas.” He didn’t look back.

  Anna stood and watched him trudge across the field away from her. Out of the corner of her burning eye, she caught sight of a lone figure standing across the river at the edge of a grouping of trees, holding a fishing pole. He was watching Anna. She hurried up the bank, out of his sight.

  Anna returned home muddy and trembling, her broken heart oozing with the worst kind of love—the unrequited kind. If Joe truly loved her, he wouldn’t leave her for a wife. In contrast, Anna’s feelings for Joe had been unwavering. That is, once she realized that she had them. True, there had been some misunderstandings before she knew that she loved Joe, and she almost married someone else because that was what she was supposed to do. Joe was mad about that, but Anna thought he had forgiven her. She should have known better. Everyone she cared about abandoned her—high society, her father, even her mother had left her, having inconsiderately died. They had broken her heart, every one of them. She had thought Joe was different. She had been wrong.

  Joe wouldn’t love her unless she vowed to obey him. Even if Anna did want to make such a promise, she didn’t think she could keep it, and that would be a sin.

  What if he commanded her to have children? How could she do police work pushing a baby carriage? She would surely be fired. Anna definitely did not want to pledge obedience to Joe Singer.

  Anna stripped out of her muddy clothes, leaving them on the floor near the entryway so as not to soil the animal-skin rugs. Their taxidermied faces stared at her sympathetically. Less than three months ago, she had been a celebrated beauty, daughter of a financial magnate, buying her trousseau and contemplating life with her well-made, well-bred, well-heeled fiancé. She had liked her adoring fiancé, and she had traded him for the freedom to save brothel girls from a killer, to love Joe Singer—a common police officer—and to work as an assistant police matron earning seventy-five dollars a month. Now her father had disowned her, her friends were scandalized, and she couldn’t pay her rent. It grieved Anna to be shunned, and inconvenienced her to be poor, but nothing hurt her like the knowledge that Joe Singer was courting other girls. She loved him more than anything in the world, except police work, which she loved the same. Nothing pleased her more, except trapping killers, which pleased her equally, than to be in his arms. She would give up anything, except her independence, to have him, because, for the first time, Anna was the mistress of her own destiny. She could go where she pleased, do what she pleased, and she had paid a terrible price for it. She would not relinquish that freedom, not even for the most delicious man in Los Angeles.

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning, Anna arrived at work wearing spectacles that she didn’t need, pinched from a man’s pocket on the trolley. They looked terrible, but she didn’t know it. She could barely see when she wore them; however, they obscured the puffy, pink eyes beneath the lenses. Anna didn’t want Joe Singer to see that she had been crying. She planned to pretend that she hadn’t thrown herself at him at the river yesterday. In fact, it had been some other girl who merely looked like Anna, and who was dying inside.

  She strode to the desk clerk, a Mr. Melvin, who sat behind the long oak reception counter, fenced in with iron bars. He had bad skin and a tiny mouth, which Anna thought made him look like a turtle. She liked him very much. At her approach, he shrank into his shell.

  She lowered her voice to a butterfly whisper and tried to look friendly. “Mr. Melvin, where is Officer Singer?” If she could avoid Joe, she would. He made her feel terrible, ugly, and discarded.

  Mr. Melvin whispered back. “I believe he left for Chinatown. He’s searching for the singsong girls.”

  Anna breathed out audibly. At least two things were right in the world. Joe would find the singsong girls and set them free, and she wouldn’t have to see him. Squinting in the boosted glasses, Anna slunk up the stairs toward her desk. There, the stack of letters awaited her. She sat, ripped the top one open, and read.

  Beloved Miss Blanc,

  I read about you in the newspaper, and let me get straight to the heart of the matter. Some people call me handsome, if I may say so. I have a house with plumbing, and a good position at the box factory. I want you to be my wife. My mother will help with the chores. Please respond with a yes and make me the happiest man in Los Angeles.

  With deepest affection,

  Charlie Douglas

  Anna sighed. It was a sad letter, really. She let it fall into the trash and opened the next envelope. This letter was scented with lilac.

  Dear Miss Blanc,

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  Marry me

  For I love you . . .

  It was from an old shipping magnate who had done business with her father. Anna hesitated, biting her thumbnail. Then she crumpled it and tossed it in the wastebasket. The third, fourth, and fifth letters contained additional bad poetry, declarations, and proposals. Into the basket they went. Anna threw out all the letters with male names on the return address, until they filled and overflowed her trashcan. About fifty letters remained. The first five were from jealous wives who held Anna responsible for the affections of men she had never met.

  Anna threw up her hands. “There’s nothing I can do about it.” She scooped the rest of the letters into the pile on the floor. She noticed Detective Wolf leaning against a pillar, waiting for her to glance up. His hair was slicked back, his dark eyebrows lowered. He looked mad. Anna stood and nodded her head. “Detective.”

  He slipped his arm through hers. “May I speak to you in private?”

  “Of course.” Anna braced herself, wondering for which of her many peccadilloes she was about to be reprimanded.

  Wolf steered Anna downstairs, past the rack for helmets, to the rear of the station, out the back door, and through the large gates to the basement stables. He stopped at the ladder to the hayloft. They stood alone, but for half a dozen Morgans twitching and nickering in the stalls. It smelled leathery and equestrian, like horse droppings. She sneezed from hay dust.

  Wolf let go of her arm and turned to face her, smiling tightly. “My sister went to Long Beach on a pleasure trip day before yesterday. She told me the most unusual story about a sweet little vampire, dressed like a princess, who attacked a police officer to steal a Chinaman’s severed head for her dinner. Apparently, the whole town is overcome with terror. Then, yesterday evening, a fisherman saw a lovely little lady throw what looked like a head into the river not far from here.”

  “I’m not a vamp.”

  “You don’t need to tell me what really happened because, as amusing as it would be, it’s best if I don’t know. But I had to cover for you. If you assaulted a cop, you could be in serious trouble.”

  Anna’s lips parted in surprise. “You don’t believe me?”

  “I believe you are an asset to the force.” He grinned.

  “You did want to kiss me in the stables.”

  “Honeybun, every cop on the force wants to kiss you in the stables. But last I checked, you were Joe’s girl.”

  Anna’s face flushed. “No. He doesn’t want me.”

  Wolf pressed his lips. “Now that’s a shame.”

  “I didn’t assault that ignorant cop. He assaulted me. I simply got the better of him.”

  Anna heard the door creak and glanced up. Joe entered, his eyes scanning the stalls. They trained on Wolf like a double-barreled shotgun.

  Anna stepped very close to Wolf and gazed up into his face. She shook his hand, holding it for far too long. “Thank you, Detective.” She felt Joe’s hand on her arm, pulling her away. His face was red like a tomato. Wolf’s eyes shone with bemusement, guilty pleasure, and trepidation. He stepped away from Anna and raised his hands. “I didn’t do it.”

  Anna shook Joe off. “I thought you were in Chinat
own.”

  Joe’s jaw tightened. “So you go make love to him?” He flung a finger at Wolf in a grand indictment.

  “Officer Singer, you and I are not courting. I’ll make love to whomever I want. It’s none of your business.”

  Joe Singer swore and turned back to Wolf, his eyes angry slits, but his jealousy gave Anna no true satisfaction. It was all masculine bluster and pride. She knew that now. He wouldn’t fight for Anna. She had finally resigned herself to the fact that Joe Singer, for all she had thought him to be, was faithless. He didn’t really love her, and if he had once it had been a weak sort of love. But maybe that was the only kind of love there was in men’s hearts.

  She thought she had better rescue Wolf. “I tell you, it isn’t his fault. And we aren’t lovers, though who knows what the future will bring.”

  Wolf slapped his forehead. “That came out wrong, didn’t it Assistant Matron Blanc?” Wolf backed away from Joe, who stood uncomfortably close and was breathing like a bull. Wolf said, “She and I were just discussing a spooky story about a beautiful vampire that assaulted a cop in Long Beach and stole a severed head.”

  Joe’s eyes shifted from Anna to Wolf and then back again. “Oh God.”

  Wolf blew out a breath. “Just a rumor, but one that could get said vampire incarcerated and any officer who covered for her fired.”

  “So you’re afraid that Captain Wells will get word of it and link that vampire with . . . with Countess Dracula?” He waved an arm in Anna’s direction.

  Anna said, “I’m not a vamp.”

  Wolf’s brows descended. “Exactly that.”

  “You lied to cover for her? Oh boy, Wolf. You’re in for it,” Joe said.

  Wolf wrinkled his forehead. “Lie is such a strong word.”

  “If you didn’t know she stole the head, what in hell were you covering for?”

  “Because she was up to something. It was her first day back. I didn’t want Matron Clemens to fire her.” Wolf grinned. “She’s an asset to the force.”